


Eye of the Storm

by Maverocknroll



Series: Notorious [1]
Category: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: #bobsaysshipem, M/M, no really I can't get them to shut up, references to past sexual abuse, sassmasters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-07 12:58:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maverocknroll/pseuds/Maverocknroll
Summary: (Post Servant of the Shard/“Wickless in the Nether”)When Ilnezhara finds an ancient artifact has been stolen from her shop, Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri are happy to get it back for her (or at least Jarlaxle is happy—Artemis is just along for the ride).Entreri, meanwhile, is having trouble with another artifact—the thrice-cursed Idalia’s Flute—digging up buried memories and a buried attraction to his insufferable peacock of a partner, an attraction he has every intention of ignoring.Neither “quest” turns out to be so easy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _“I’ll just write something short and fun,” I said._
> 
>  
> 
> _And the gods laughed._
> 
>  
> 
> So this was the fandom that introduced me to the wide world of fanfic years ago, and I thought it was about time I pay it back with some fanfic of my own!
> 
> This fic was originally inspired by a few prompts on the Forgotten Realms kinkmeme… but then it kind of… went off and did its own thing, so. The rating you see above will definitely go up (though not for a while, because Artemis is a stubborn git), but you should expect more bad plot and snark than smut.

“Thieves! In _my_ shop!”

Ilnezhara’s voice was thunderous, more booming than a voice should be, coming from her petite frame. Entreri angled himself towards the door, conveniently keeping Jarlaxle between himself and the fuming dragon, which was fair, really, since it was Jarlaxle’s fault the dragon was fuming.

On second thought, it was Jarlaxle’s fault Entreri was even _anywhere near a dragon_ , so it was more than fair.

“What thieves?” Jarlaxle asked, his voice calm, hands empty and out in an expression of harmlessness Ilnezhara didn’t believe any more than Entreri.

Her hands clenched into fists, and Entreri thought he saw her exhale a waft of smoke. “The ones you let into my shop when you were supposed to be watching it!”

And _that_ was _her_ fault, paying them to be babysitters while she and her sister did gods-knew-what for a week, but Jarlaxle backtracked rather than argued. “And what was stolen?”

“A figurine,” she said, voice clipped. “An ancient artifact of Kozah.”

Jarlaxle’s eyebrows twitched up at the word “artifact”, and Entreri wondered just how steep a price he would be paying. He shuffled another half a step towards the door. “Perhaps you could describe it to us?”

Ilnezhara breathed out a harsh sigh, calming in increments. “This tall.” Her hands sketched the shape of something less than half a foot tall. “A stone sculpture of a man, though its shape is crude. The nose chipped off centuries ago. It is an ugly thing, really, but worth more than you can afford.”

“And you just had it out in the shop?” Entreri muttered, biting his tongue the next moment when that drew her glare his way.

“I am certain whoever took it can’t have gone far,” Jarlaxle said. He stopped speaking mid-breath as Ilnezhara approached, the tension in his shoulders saying he was preparing himself for an attack. Instead she looked him in the eye as she whipped off his hat.

“Your treasured hat has not gone far either,” she said with a grin that was all teeth.

Ilnezhara placed the hat upon her head, setting its floppy brim to a jaunty angle that looked almost as much coquettish as ridiculous. Much as the action seemed harmless, Jarlaxle knew it was a power-play. She was a dragon, after all, and he wouldn’t dare take it from her, not while he could still see the anger behind her smile, for all that it was behind blunted teeth.

Entreri, for his part, did not share in Jarlaxle’s distress. “You should burn it. You would be doing the Realms a favor.”

Jarlaxle gave Entreri a look as though he’d been personally wounded. Entreri gave Jarlaxle a look that said he didn’t care.

“That is an option,” Ilnezhara purred, fluttering her eyelashes as she reached up to play with the diatryma feather.

“There is no need to threaten such violence against my wardrobe,” Jarlaxle insisted, hands up in a placating gesture. “Entreri and I would be happy to retrieve that stolen artifact for you.”

“We would?” Entreri drawled.

“Well, I would be happy. You would be taciturn and verbally combative.”

Entreri considered that and nodded.

Ilnezhara flashed her unfriendly grin again. “That sounds like a lovely plan!” She spun on her heel, walking back towards the back of the store.

“Erm.” Jarlaxle hesitated, rubbing a hand over his bald scalp. “My hat?”

“Will be safe with me in the meantime.” Ilnezhara twirled the feather again and winked. “It looks better on me anyway.”

“It would look better in the garbage,” Entreri grumbled.

Jarlaxle threw him a sour look.

 

And yet, out in the daylight, their boots crunching snow into the cobblestones, Jarlaxle looked just as cheerful as ever. The hat was no great loss, Entreri suspected, though he knew Jarlaxle kept much of his arsenal in the interdimensional pocket tucked inside. He had contingencies, of course. Jarlaxle always had contingencies.

“I suspect the thieves knew what they were taking,” Jarlaxle mused aloud. His breath misted in front of his face, and already the tips of his ears were reddening from the cold. “Else, why steal something so unassuming?”

Entreri nodded in agreement. He’d already come to that conclusion. “The statue sounds even uglier than you.”

Jarlaxle grinned. “My friend, everything is uglier than I. That will hardly help our search.”

“Well, at least we have your humility to rely on.”

Jarlaxle rubbed a hand over his bald head before pulling up his hood with a heavy sigh. “I do feel as though I am walking around naked.”

Entreri threw him an amused look. “I assure you, we would be getting quite a few more stares if you were.”

Jarlaxle grinned, teeth a flash of white against black skin. “Appreciative ones, of course.” He shifted his gait into more of a strut, and Entreri snorted, shaking his head.

“Couldn’t Kimmuriel just…?” Entreri let Jarlaxle supply his own verb. _Duplicate it? Provide another? Open a portal and steal the hat back?_

_Stab out my eyes so I never have to see it again?_

“Oh, of course he could! But the lady has issued a challenge, and I intend to deliver!”

Entreri blinked. He was long past being surprised by his companion and settled now for merely resigned. “A challenge.”

Jarlaxle offered him an innocent smile. “Is it not?”

It occurred to Entreri that they had missed the turn to their apartment, that he had just kept following Jarlaxle’s lead without paying much heed to where they were going. He supposed he should be concerned by that, and maybe he would be, if he decided to care.

“I could also stab out one of your eyes. Would that not offer a challenge?”

Jarlaxle’s uncovered eye glinted in amusement. “My hat is hardly an eye. You would not think me reliant on a single item, would you?”

“Most people are not reliant on one eye, yet here we are.”

“Here we are, indeed,” Jarlaxle mused, and it was as the drow was ducking into the nearest building that Entreri realized he’d led them to the baker’s.

“Really?” he sighed.

Jarlaxle glanced back, and his large elf eyes—or eye, in this case—conveyed a look of innocence a little too well when he needed them to. “A thief stealing something so priceless would not linger in the city. If the thief has left, then so must we, and I would like a cookie before we go.”

Jarlaxle turned a beaming smile on Piter, the chubby baker who always looked nervous, even when he smiled back. Entreri just grumbled something unflattering at his back.

“I will get you a cookie, too,” Jarlaxle said, turning his head just slightly to indicate he was talking to Entreri.

“I do not want a cookie.”

“Then I will get you two.”

Entreri opened and closed his mouth, only to throw up his hands in resignation.

 

The city guard had, for once, been marginally helpful. Not helpful enough to stop the thieves—and it was thieves, not thief—before leaving the city, but helpful enough to have noticed something off in their demeanor and to pay attention.

The woman had been calm enough, the lady guard told them after some truly nauseating attempts at flirtation from Jarlaxle, but the man she was with had been all darting eyes and nervous sweat.

“Red hair on ‘im,” she said. “A curly nest of it. Pale enough you could see his veins.”

“And the woman?” Jarlaxle prompted, sidling closer. “Not as comely as you, I am certain. Tell me, what color are your eyes?”

Entreri was too busy rolling his to notice the guard’s unimpressed stare.

“Tough-looking broad,” a second guard, a man, chimed in, to the relief of his companion. “Dark hair and eyes, with a scarred neck.” He gestured, sliding a finger across his throat.

“Which way?” Entreri asked, cutting off whatever simpering commentary Jarlaxle had planned next.

“South,” said the woman. “Towards Impiltur.”

“Wonderful,” Entreri muttered. They’d passed through Impiltur on the way to Damara but had overstayed their welcome after Jarlaxle had seduced a local nobleman’s daughter. Irritation was a prickly feeling under his skin.

“A challenge,” Jarlaxle reminded him.

“An annoyance.”

The glare Entreri sent him as he walked past said he wasn’t just talking about the “mission”, and Jarlaxle frowned at his companion’s back before following, reaching up as though to tip his hat in thanks at the pair of guards, only to remember he wasn’t wearing his hat, turning the blunder into an over-the-top flourish instead.

The skies threatened snow, the city walls a dark gray against a paler gray backdrop, and Entreri cut a dark figure against them both, in clothing and demeanor. Procuring horses was next on their list, and Jarlaxle was content to follow the man in silence, making good time the way passers-by leaped out of Entreri’s path.

Or, he was content up until a point. “You appear to be in a fouler mood than usual.”

Entreri didn’t respond, just set his jaw tighter. Still, Jarlaxle didn’t miss the way his hand dropped to touch the flute at his belt before slipping away again.

“Did the cookie not agree with you?” Jarlaxle asked, just to get a rise out of him. “Should I not have insisted on that second one?”

Entreri growled but didn’t answer, knowing that silence irked Jarlaxle the most. In truth, he wasn’t sure what was the matter with him, and that uncertainty was becoming unsettlingly familiar. That Jarlaxle was noticing was not good.

“Perhaps I should invest in another hat before we go,” Jarlaxle went on, unperturbed, “just to keep my head warm in the meantime. Damara has its charms, but the cold is not among them.”

“What charms?” Entreri muttered, only to scowl, realizing that Jarlaxle had successfully drawn him into a conversation. Jarlaxle’s ears perked, but Entreri cut him off before he could answer. “Please do not enumerate them. I am certain you could come up with all manner of inane things. You could just grow out your hair. Assuming you have hair to grow out.”

“You think I do not?” Jarlaxle asked through a crooked smile.

Entreri had never seen the drow shave, yet his scalp remained smooth. “I have a theory that you are like one of those hairless cats Pasha Pook liked to fawn over.”

“They sound like majestic creatures.”

“They were wrinkly and ugly.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, and the sound did something to ease that prickling under Entreri’s skin. He marveled with some frustration at that, that Jarlaxle could so annoy him one moment and put him at ease the next.

“No, a hat would, I believe, be less of a hassle.”

 

Entreri still couldn’t believe that Jarlaxle had managed to find the one hat in all of Faerûn more garish than the one Ilnezhara had taken. It was a tall, fuzzy affair, and Entreri was convinced Jarlaxle had bought it just to annoy him. His one consolation was that the snow was likely to ruin it once it started.

They had been riding for hours when the first flurries fell.

Jarlaxle squinted up at the sky, shifting in his saddle to relieve the pressure on his tailbone. “If memory serves, there is an inn with a few hamlets up ahead and it is the only bit of civilization on this road for miles. It would, perhaps, be a good place to wait out the storm and an even better place to ask about our quarry.”

“And if _my_ memory serves,” Entreri replied, “we were chased out of that same inn only a few months ago.”

Jarlaxle waved his hand breezily. “I am sure they’ve forgotten all about us by now. Or at least about our little misunderstanding.”

“You tried to convince them you were some wealthy prince from a far-off land.”

“Is that really so far from the truth?”

“And you tried to claim a keg as tribute to your ‘country’. At sword-point.”

Jarlaxle paused and hummed. “Yes, that might have been a bit far, but you seemed to find it entertaining at the time. And I did get that keg.”

Entreri couldn’t quite suppress a smile, not when he thought about a wine-emboldened Jarlaxle trying to shove the keg into his hat.

The stablehand stared at them when they handed over the reins of their horses, but whether that was because of Jarlaxle’s outlandish getup or because he recognized them was difficult to tell. Jarlaxle didn’t pay the stare any mind, sweeping into the inn like he expected his entrance to be met with a fanfare of trumpets.

It was met instead with cold stares from the bar and the clutter of tables by the fire. The bartender, Gusev, was a stringy man with scarred knuckles, and he straightened at the sight of them, muttering something to his considerably less stringy friends at the bar.

“I think they remember us,” Entreri drawled, following Jarlaxle to the table in the back corner, counting heads and gauging body language, mapping out any potential escape routes.

The two men at the bar, both round as well as solid and easily a foot taller than Entreri, rose predictably and approached while Jarlaxle sat back, propping up his boots on the opposite chair. Under the table, Entreri kept a hand on his dagger.

“Ah!” Jarlaxle brightened when they stopped in front of their table. “Stew for my friend and for myself, if you please, with your finest ale!”

“Ye _took_ me finest ale!” the bartender shouted across the room.

“Your second finest, then.”

“Ye aren’t welcome here,” one of the behemoths in front of them said, folding his arms in a way that made their muscles stand out.

Jarlaxle looked at Entreri as though surprised by the revelation. “Well, that’s an awfully rude thing to say to someone.”

“Just get _out_ , ye drow!” Gusev barked.

Jarlaxle’s smile took on a sharp edge. “But I am comfortable.”

The silence was tense as the four men traded stares, a moment of suspended action before a flurry of movement. One man reached for Jarlaxle, but the drow hooked one foot under the chair it had been propped up on and kicked it up and out, solid wood connecting with a solid chin. The blow sent the man staggering back, distracting his partner just long enough for Entreri to sweep up beside him, jeweled dagger pressed to his throat.

“Try not to kill them,” Jarlaxle instructed Entreri, still slouching back in his seat, spinning a dagger between his fingers that had not been there before.

“I make no promises.”

The first man shook his head, regaining his senses—some of them, anyway—and picked up the chair that had been thrown at him, roaring as he tossed it at Jarlaxle. Jarlaxle rolled under it, out of his chair and to his feet, and the chair splintered against the wall. He pumped his hand, once, twice, and a pair of daggers hit his attacker between the eyes, pommel first, dazing him enough to send him tumbling into and snapping the nearest table.

In the kerfuffle, the second man jerked away from Entreri’s dagger and tried to slap it out of his hand, a pitiable offense that Entreri avoided easily, kicking one leg out from under him, a hand in his opponent’s hair encouraging his downward sweep, headfirst, into the table.

Gusev cursed and clutched at his balding tufts of hair.

“Now, now, there is no need for further violence,” Jarlaxle assured the room at large as he stood over the pair of bleeding, groaning men. He held up his empty hands and approached the bar. “I do feel rather terrible about how we parted last and would like to make amends.”

“ _Amends_?” Gusev squawked, gesturing at the mess. He looked helplessly at his other patrons, who suddenly found themselves engrossed in something else.

“We will pay for the damages, of course,” Jarlaxle assured him as Entreri came up beside him, making no effort to look less menacing. “As well as for the missing keg, and the… erm.”

Entreri saw the moment it occurred to Jarlaxle that he did not have his hat, and that without his hat, he did not have full access to his funds. Jarlaxle had taken to keeping a few coins in a pouch at his belt and a few more tucked into his boot, but most of his wealth he’d secreted away in that hat’s pocket dimension.

“In the morning, of course,” Jarlaxle amended, plastering on another beaming smile. “Once the snow has let up.”

Gusev looked disgruntled, but a glance around the disheveled room told him he hadn’t much choice. “And I take it ye expect to stay here in the meantime?”

“That would be wonderful, thank you. I trust our room last time is still available?”

Gusev shook his head in amazement, face a splotchy, angry red that said he was an inch away from trying to strangle the drow. Entreri could sympathize. “Ye pay for the room now, and I expect recompense first thing, even if the storm’s still raging,” he insisted, though Entreri wondered what he planned to do about it.

Jarlaxle cheerfully agreed, plucking out a few coins from his coin purse, ordering stew for them both before following Entreri back to the table in the corner, helping him right the chairs before sitting down.

“We are going to have to get creative,” Jarlaxle said softly. “I would rather not antagonize him further, as we may have to pass through here again on the way back.”

“I assume by ‘creative’ you mean either robbing someone or whoring yourself out on a street corner.”

Jarlaxle tsked. “Those are thoroughly uncreative solutions, my friend, as high a price as I would be sure to fetch.”

“So you _were_ leaning towards prostitution.”

“I have done worse things for money. But no.”

Asking the other patrons revealed that their quarry had, in fact, passed this way.

“Perhaps ye should take notes,” Gusev muttered from where he crouched on the floor, examining the damage to the chairs. “They managed to spend a night ‘ere without breaking or stealing anything!”

Entreri snorted. “Considering the price of this stew, I suspect you’re the one doing the stealing.”

Gusev shot him a black look, and under the table, Jarlaxle gave him a sharp kick in the shin.

“What?”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about them?” Jarlaxle asked earnestly. “Where they are heading, perhaps? How they were dressed?”

“Nothing remarkable about how they dressed,” a woman with a travel-worn cloak and her feet stretched in front of the fire said, “except that she wasn’t wearing a scarf or something to hide that hideous scar. The weather called for it. It’s like she was displaying it on purpose. That and the medallion around her neck. It had some symbol I didn’t recognize.”

“Symbol?” Entreri prompted, taking a sip of heavily watered-down ale.

She shrugged. “Looked like a buncha squiggles to me.”

Entreri glanced at Jarlaxle, who shrugged, shaking his head.

“Looked like a holy symbol of some kind,” said the woman’s friend, a lady dwarf with a voice like gravel.

“Of what, the God of Squiggles?” Entreri scoffed.

Jarlaxle shot him a mildly scolding look. “Our deepest thanks for your help, dear ladies,” he said, tipping the fuzzy monstrosity that passed for a hat. His smile turned a bit crooked, shifting from friendly to flirtatious. “Perhaps, there is a way we could repay your assistance?”

Entreri sighed into his stew, ignoring the way the ladies giggled and so missing the way the human woman slid a considering look his way. Jarlaxle’s eyebrows twitched up, and he nudged Entreri with his elbow, an action that would have gotten anyone else stabbed. Entreri scowled at him, then, noting Jarlaxle’s leading look, scowled at the woman.

Intellectually, he could understand her appeal. Her face was balanced with fine cheekbones and lustrous hair, and her body was shapely, but she clearly was not having the effect on him that Jarlaxle was expecting. Entreri often wondered what the disconnect was, what piece of him had broken that he did not feel attraction the way every other man seemed to.

“She does not interest me,” he muttered, turning back to his meal and ignoring the bemused and frustrated look on Jarlaxle’s face.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been years since Entreri had cared, or thought to care, about romance and his lack of interest, but as he laid awake, fingers dancing soundlessly over the flute, his mind kept drifting back to it. There was something there, something stuck, like a kernel between his teeth, and he couldn’t help poking at it.

Entreri had certainly lain with women, many women, but there had been a cold sort of interest in the act itself, no burning desire for anyone in particular. Staring up at the play of moonlight across the ceiling, he thought of the woman in the tavern, tried picturing the play of moonlight across her bare skin instead. He cataloged his reaction: nothing.

Entreri sighed in frustration and wondered, not for the first time, if he was simply broken. Had he been born like this, he wondered, or had what happened to him as a child—?

Maybe a different woman. Ilnezhara was beautiful, certainly, if he could set aside the fact she was a dragon. Her shape should elicit something, her large eyes, her full lips… He pictured kissing her, pictured the weight of her breasts in his hand and: nothing.

Entreri gritted his teeth. How was this so simple for Jarlaxle? He had looked at her, had wanted her, had had her. Without his permission, Entreri’s mind wandered to that image, to Jarlaxle kissing her full lips, to ink-black skin fitted to her pale curves, to the shift of muscles under his skin as he brought her pleasure, and…

_Something._

Entreri shot up, tossing the flute to the bed. He didn’t even remember picking it up.

“I need air.”

 

What he found was the damned drow, though Entreri would deny he had been looking for him. He spotted him from the door, bald head tilted back as he stretched out his tongue, trying to catch the snowflakes as they fell. There was a giddy sort of joy on Jarlaxle’s face as he squinted into the snowfall, as he bent to scoop up a handful of the stuff, long, bare fingers patting it down, manipulating it into shapes.

Entreri shook his head at the display. For all his centuries of life, on the surface Jarlaxle was like a child, still discovering wonders Entreri had never wasted time marveling at. There was a warm feeling spreading through his chest, something dangerously close to affection, and he stepped out into the cold in hopes that it would banish the feeling.

“If the snow is yellow, don’t eat it,” he said by way of greeting, and Jarlaxle’s ears pricked before he looked up, still patting down the ball of snow in his hands. He tilted his head, innocently curious.

“Why would snow be—?” Jarlaxle cut himself off, scrunching his nose. “Oh, charming.”

Entreri pulled up his hood, wondering again why he had come out here, why he had felt the need to be around the drow he already spent too much time around.

“You will get frostbite, if you keep doing that.” He indicated the snowball in Jarlaxle’s bare hands with a tip of his head. The tips of Jarlaxle’s ears were already turning red. “I hope you did not leave all your healing potions in your hat as well?”

Jarlaxle gave him a flat look, tossing the snowball up into the air and grinning to himself when it held together. “I am always prepared. You know this.”

Entreri hummed, unconvinced. He was about to ask about how prepared Jarlaxle was to pay the innkeeper tomorrow when Jarlaxle’s hand twitched, and his vision turned white in a shock of cold. He squawked as Jarlaxle laughed, shaking the snow from his face, and Entreri pinned a look on him equal parts incredulous and murderous.

The damned drow just laughed all the harder, bending to scoop up more even as he made a tactical retreat, wading backwards in the snow. “Do not scowl so, _abbil_! I have heard this is how children on the surface play. Is this not so?”

“There is no snow in Calimport,” Entreri snapped, tensing to dodge as he eyed Jarlaxle’s hands.

“Ah, then you are a novice to this game as well!” Jarlaxle’s grin was wicked as he tossed his new snowball back and forth.

“You had best not be planning on throwing that.”

“No?” There was a dare in his voice, a mischievous sparkle in his uncovered eye.

“I will put snow in your hat,” Entreri promised, edging back towards the door. “Yellow snow.”

Jarlaxle paused, hand poised to throw. “Which hat?”

“ _All of them_.”

Jarlaxle laughed but did not throw. “Oh, you are no fun! Another game, perhaps. Have you ever made a snow-dwarf? …Artemis?”

He pouted when Entreri just turned and walked back inside.

 

When Entreri next came downstairs, it was to find Jarlaxle trying to fast-talk Gusev, who just leaned ominously across the bar, clearly having none of it. Outside, the storm still raged, and Entreri had a feeling they were about to be kicked out into it… or that Gusev would try to kick them out, in any case.

“So you see,” said Jarlaxle, holding up a little jade charm Entreri knew to be worth one gold piece at most, “while I may not have the exact amount on hand in coins, what I _do_ have is this priceless item, which it would greatly pain me to part with. Is there anything else I could offer you, perhaps? I would so hate to give this up.”

He had both eyes uncovered to give Gusev the full force of his wide-eyed, guileless stare.

“You could give me your head,” Gusev grated out, and Entreri watched Jarlaxle’s face tighten in annoyance.

Jarlaxle went back to rummaging in his pouches. “Perhaps there is something else I could entice you with—”

“How much do we owe you?” Entreri sighed, coming up beside his partner. They could both just threaten the man into submission, they knew, but they did not need to be leaving a trail of trouble behind them, not when they planned to come back this way. That, and he did so enjoy surprising Jarlaxle in the rare instances he could pull it off.

The stringy man sized Entreri up with a look. “Fifty gold.”

Entreri just arched an eyebrow.

“It was a very fine ale,” Gusev said defensively. When Entreri just stared at him, he sighed, deflating, and muttered, “Twenty gold, then.”

Still holding the man’s stare, Entreri pulled out his coin purse and shook out eight gold pieces onto the counter. He then stripped off his red-stitched gauntlet, opened a fold inside its wrist and pulled out three more. With a glance at Jarlaxle, he sighed. “Hold on.” He reached back into that fold… and then _into_ that fold, and Gusev gaped as his arm disappeared up to his elbow.

“You have a bag of holding,” Jarlaxle blurted as he watched, only to realize that he shouldn’t have. A genuine expression of surprise opened up vulnerabilities no drow could risk.

“So it would appear.” Entreri didn’t smile—he rarely smiled—but Jarlaxle could make out the wicked amusement in his gray eyes as he pulled out another pair of coins.

“And it works, sewn into the inside of your gauntlet?” Jarlaxle asked, again impressed by his friend’s cleverness. It clearly did work, and the gauntlet would prevent any sort of magic detection from finding it.

Entreri nodded, pleased by Jarlaxle’s clear amazement even as he regretted revealing this advantage. “It is the red stitching on the outside that foils magic. I can also wear magic rings underneath without any trouble.” He wiggled the fingers of his right hand, where Jarlaxle caught a glimpse of a silver ring with a frosty blue gem. Protection against cold, would be his guess, and Jarlaxle had to smile, knowing how much his friend hated Damara’s climate.

“I had wondered where you had secreted all your coin to,” Jarlaxle said, craning his neck to get a better look into the bag, only for Entreri to hold it further away as he reached back in to rummage. “Or, I should say, I had wondered what you had spent your money on.”

“On the bag, obviously,” Entreri replied, fishing out another handful of gold coins to slam onto the counter, Jarlaxle’s eyebrows rising to the brim of his hat. “I have considered investing in a magic item that duplicates the bearer, if only to give you something else to blather at, but earplugs would, perhaps, be cheaper.”

“What else do you have in there?”

Entreri gave an unhelpful shrug. “Obviously not earplugs, if I’m still listening to you.”

Gusev counted the coins, bit the edges of a couple to make sure they were real gold, and then nodded in satisfaction. Entreri slid another pair of coins over, and Gusev furrowed his brow in confusion.

“So that when we return, you will greet us with a smile.”

Gusev’s expression soured.

Entreri slipped his gauntlet back on. “I would practice that,” he said, turning on his heel.

“Look at you, throwing gold coins around like they are nothing,” Jarlaxle said as he followed, taking off his hat to fan himself with it dramatically. He fluttered his eyelashes at Entreri and hooked an arm through his. “My _khal abbil_ , I had no idea you were so… well-endowed!”

A startled sound died in Entreri’s throat as he jerked his arm away. “‘Well off’ is the phrase, Jarlaxle. _Well off_. Well-endowed implies…”

“I know what I said.”

Jarlaxle had to laugh, marveling at the number of colors Entreri’s lighter but still dark skin could turn. Entreri scowled at him and pulled his arm free, rubbing at where Jarlaxle’s hand had touched him as though he had left a mark.

“Next time, you’re working the street corner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you weren't left picturing Jarlaxle singing "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" at the end of that snow scene, you read it wrong and need to go back.
> 
> Also part of this chapter riffs [on a prompt](https://frkinkmeme.livejournal.com/735.html?thread=201439#t201439) discussing how loaded Artemis probably is, considering his career as a top-notch assassin. My theory still is that he is secretly a dragon and that Jarlaxle has a type. _nods_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Sidenote_ : Brien is pronounced BREE-en. Not just... you know, fancy Damaran Brian.
> 
> Also, I'm thinking 2-3 chapters a week... I'm up to Chapter 14, writing-wise, and am coming up on writing the last 'arc', so. Stay tuned!!

They swept into town on the coattails of the storm. Jarlaxle’s new hat had, by then, been thoroughly ruined, and Entreri took no small amount of satisfaction in watching Jarlaxle drop the waterlogged clump of fur into the snow. He had started to perform a eulogy, only to abandon it to catch up with Entreri when he spurred on his horse.

To Jarlaxle the scene was like a painting as they rode up, roof-tops limned in white, and while there were already tracks in the snow, the roads hadn’t yet been stirred into a muddy gray sludge.

“Lovely,” he said aloud, believing he should point that out to his companion, to give him something else to associate with that adjective, if nothing else. To his credit, Entreri actually looked up long enough to assess the image before shrugging noncommittally. It wasn’t an outright dismissal, and that Jarlaxle would take as progress.

Perhaps they had made more progress than that, he decided when they found the local inn and brought their horses around to the stables. In the back, dozing pleasantly, was another pair of horses bearing the brand of Marsk, the horsebreeder who sold his horses in Heliogabalus. He glanced from the horses to Entreri, who nodded.

“Time to make some new friends?” Entreri asked, patting the dagger at his hip.

“I do so like making new friends,” Jarlaxle cheerfully replied.

There was no fanfare when Jarlaxle burst into this tavern either, but at least this bartender was only scowling on principle rather than because of something Jarlaxle had done. Entreri supposed it was only a matter of time.

It was hard to go unnoticed traveling with a drow, doubly so when that drow was Jarlaxle, and Entreri was unsurprised to find a sea of heads turning their way. He took the opportunity to scan the faces around them, noting a pair tucked behind the far side of the bar, partially hidden by a wooden pillar. In the firelit glow of the room, he could make out a pale face framed by red hair a hood didn’t quite hide, sitting across from the one person who didn’t bother to look up, a woman to go by the fall of the cloak across her shoulders.

While Jarlaxle cheerfully and loudly ordered drinks and a meal for the two of them, Entreri procured the table next to the thieves. From here he could better make out the woman, middle-aged to go by her weathered skin, the jagged pale scar around her neck displayed while her face remained shadowed under her hood. Entreri had seen such scars before, and he wouldn’t doubt there were matching scars on her wrists, under her gloves. He caught a glimpse of the medallion around her neck before she caught his glance, and he pretended to be admiring the cleavage it rested between. He imitated Jarlaxle a moment, offering her a slow smile when they locked eyes, and he heard her trip over what she had been saying to the considerably younger man across from her.

“They are out of mutton, alas,” Jarlaxle informed him as he sat down, sliding a drink across to Entreri. His eyebrows twitched up in a question.

“I suspect we will survive.” Behind his drink, Entreri sent him the gestures for _necklace_ and _lightning_. Jarlaxle blinked a moment before his brow smoothed in understanding: the “squiggles” on the woman’s holy symbol were three streaks of lightning, the symbol of Talos.

_She watches you_ , Jarlaxle gestured back after a few sips, the gesture hidden under what looked like him stretching and flexing his wrist.

Entreri didn’t need Jarlaxle to tell him that—he could feel her sizing both of them up—but the one thing worse than a priest was a priest of an insane god like Talos. Or Lolth.

They made idle chatter over their food, more focused on listening to the pair next to them, and the more time that passed, the more Entreri had the sense that the thieves were doing the exact same thing to them. They were able to pick up names, at least—the woman was Lorica, the man Brien—and figure out that the young man was a mage of some sort, the nervous way he fiddled with a wand tucked into his belt. Jarlaxle adjusted the fit of his eyepatch, checking for magic signatures around their person and finding faint traces around the boy’s robes, his wand, and a pair of rings, as well as strong traces around the heavy mace hanging from the woman’s belt.

_It’s not on them_ , he signed to Entreri. _We should check their rooms. Perhaps the lady can invite you back to hers?_

Entreri shot him a flat look, his jaw aching from chewing on hard bread. _Why are you so concerned with my sex life?_

_Someone needs to be!_

Entreri replied with a rude gesture that wasn’t Drow.

Jarlaxle pretended not to see it. _I will see if I can learn anything from the boy, in the meantime._

_Will you seduce an invitation out of him, as well?_ Entreri gestured a little sharply, nearly choking on his drink when Jarlaxle tipped his head, giving Brien a once-over as though considering it.

_No, he is much too suspicious._

“We really should be going, Lorica,” Brien said, interrupting whatever sputtering response Entreri was about to make, caught off-guard by the sudden flood of images and by how… inspiring they turned out to be.

“Why don’t you go on ahead, Brien?” Lorica said with an accent that softened her consonants. Entreri could feel her eyes on him again, and this time when he looked at her, she was the one to offer a slow smile.

 

Jarlaxle slipped into the shadows with the ease of one who had lived in them all his life, his boots and jewelry silent as he crept after Brien. The boy truly was paranoid, the way he kept glancing over his shoulder, and Jarlaxle wondered, idly, if he felt the drow’s eyes on him or if he was always like this. He carried the bag he was holding close to his chest rather than slung over his shoulder, but no matter how much Jarlaxle adjusted his eyepatch, he could not make out what was inside.

Brien glanced back over his shoulder one last time, his red hair a shock of color against the gray and white of winter’s touch, and he slipped between the gaping slats of a rickety barn.

“How clandestine,” Jarlaxle murmured to himself as he peeked in. Inside was a gathering of weather-beaten humans and dwarves, many bearing scars, all bearing the grim faces of the desperate.

Rather than slipping between the slats after Brien, Jarlaxle slipped into the wall itself, red eyes all that could be seen of him, hidden in the shadows. As he listened to Brien address the gathering, Jarlaxle wondered if he was a cleric himself or at least an acolyte, the way he spoke of Talos.

“Do not fear,” Brien said, reaching into his bag and producing the sculpture of Kozah, and Jarlaxle frowned, wondering what magic had prevented his eyepatch from sensing it. It truly was an ugly thing, squat and blocky, its eyes wide and staring, and Jarlaxle blinked in surprise when Brien set the thing down on a shelf right in front of his face. “For Talos watches, and he sees the deeds you do in his name. Those who have honored him need not fear for their crops this year, and while you have his likeness before you, know that you have his blessing!”

Jarlaxle slipped a bit further back into the wall when Brien gestured his way.

“But, there is a task that he requires of you—”

Gasps from his audience drew Brien to a stop, and he glanced back to see the sculpture gone.

Jarlaxle had decided it best not to wait until Brien activated whatever magic was inside the thing, and he ran back for the inn, trusting that Entreri wouldn’t mind an interruption.

 

This wasn’t the first time a woman Entreri had bedded had tried to kill him, but it was the first time one had tried to _right after_. He ducked, and the mace splintered the wall where his head had been a moment before.

Fighting with weapons truly was a different kind of exhilarating when one wasn’t wearing pants.

“If my technique was really so terrible,” he said, edging back towards his belongings, “I am open to constructive criticism.”

“You think I did not recognize you and your friend from the shop?” Lorica asked, her grin manic, bared teeth and wide eyes white against dark skin as she tore the mace free with superhuman strength. “You will not find the bauble here, if that is why you have come.”

Entreri rolled away from the next swing, snatching up his weapons belt in the process and drawing his sword and dagger. He side-stepped her next swing, but his sword might as well have been striking stone the way it glanced off her skin. Entreri gritted his teeth. He hated magic.

“As for constructive criticism,” she said, wading into his next flurry of attacks and barreling into him, “my name is not ‘Jarlaxle’!”

Entreri would blame his shock on the impact of the wall.

 

Jarlaxle skidded to a stop in front of what he assumed was Lorica’s door, to judge by the sounds going on inside. He paused a moment to listen, eyebrows creeping higher.

“Either there is a fight going on,” he murmured to himself, “or you are having more exciting sex than I am, my friend.”

A mace head punched a hole through the door.

“Much more exciting.”

The sounds died down, and Entreri emerged a moment later, looked harried and disheveled as he hurriedly laced up his pants, the rest of his belongings slung over his shoulder. He spotted Jarlaxle and froze.

“How long have you been standing there?” he asked sharply.

Jarlaxle rocked back on his heels, feeling like he was being accused of something, though he knew not what. “Only a moment. I have the…” He held up the idol absently. “Did she _attack_ you?”

Entreri started moving again, pulling on his shirt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jarlaxle pursed his lips against a laugh. “What did you _do_?”

“ _I said_ , I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Did you kill her?”

“No,” Entreri snapped, stooping to tug on his boots. “Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Then we should probably leave.”

“Yes.”

 

The problem with Talossans, as Jarlaxle and Entreri were soon to find out, was that they were insane.

“They believe their god’s approval is contingent upon it,” Jarlaxle explained on horseback, shouting to Entreri over the wind. “They will stop at nothing to get it back!”

“Wonderful,” Entreri shouted back. There was only so fast their horses were willing to go through the untried snow, even with more horses and armed and angry farmers at their backs.

The bolt of lightning streaking by on their left was more inspiring, and Entreri cursed, trying to blink away the afterimage left behind by the burst of light. A glance back showed Brien on horseback, hood back and wild red hair streaming in the wind, a wand pointed just to the side of them. Another bolt of lightning streaked past on their left, making Entreri’s horse jump and whinny, bumping into and nearly tangling with Jarlaxle’s horse.

“He’s herding us,” Entreri said, hands tight on the reins. “What’s to the right?”

He looked at Jarlaxle just long enough to watch his uncovered eye pop wide. “The river.”

The sound of cracking ice was thunderous, and Entreri swore he could hear Talos’ laughter underneath. Jarlaxle’s horse wailed, the whites of its eyes showing as it kicked and flailed, and Jarlaxle managed to roll off its back just in time to avoid going under with it, sinking into the layer of snow covering the ice.

“Jarlaxle!” Entreri pulled on the reins, twisting in his saddle. Jarlaxle had the idol, he knew. He could escape, leave the damnable drow to fend for himself—it was his fault they were in this situation anyway, his fault they were even in this godsforsaken snow-laden country!—but even as he listed all the reasons why he should leave, Entreri leaped from his saddle and drew his sword.

Another bolt of lightning arced through the air, and this time Entreri had to press himself flat into the snow to avoid it. With a snarl, he met Brien’s charge, a swipe of his sword bringing a wall of ash into the air as he twisted to the side, bringing Charon’s Claw around to slice through Brien’s horse, saddle-strap, and leg in one clean sweep. Brien screeched, he and his horse falling to the snow in a spray of gore.

They were far ahead of the farmers with their torches and pitchforks, but Lorica had joined them and dismounted, mace in hand, her cheek swelling where Entreri had bashed it into the wall. He shook his head at her, at the black look in her eyes.

“I let you live once,” he warned her, drawing his dagger and adjusting his grip on his sword. “I will not make that mistake again.”

“Neither will I.”

From where he lay, half-crushed under his horse, Brien raised his wand with a trembling hand, only for a booted foot to kick it harmlessly away.

“Now, play fair,” Jarlaxle singsonged, crouching over the dying man and picking up the wand, turning it over in his hands.

For all her impressive—and likely magically enhanced—speed and strength, Entreri easily dodged each of Lorica’s swings. But Jarlaxle frowned as he watched Entreri’s weapons bounce and glance off her skin, frowned when he noticed the skies darkening overhead, cursed under his breath when he caught her lips moving in a spell.

“ _Abbil_!” he called out, but there was no time for Entreri to bring his gauntlet to bear. Lightning streaked towards him again, this time from the heavens, and it hit him in a blinding flash, muscles tensing and seizing as electricity arced through him, making his heart thud out of rhythm. Then the light fled, and Entreri collapsed, a shove from Lorica guiding him to fall into the hole Jarlaxle’s horse had punched through the ice.

A throwing dagger plinking off her cheek stole the look of satisfaction off Lorica’s face, and she turned to Jarlaxle with a narrowed glare, only to still, noting the statue in his palm. Jarlaxle glared at her over its shoulder.

“So _you’re_ Jarlaxle,” she said and proceeded to chuckle at some private joke.

Jarlaxle wasn’t sure what to do with that and elected to ignore it. “I do not have the time to fight you and save my friend. This is what you are after, is it not? You may have it without a fight, or I will have it with one, and we will each be down an ally.” He indicated Brien at his feet, and the smirk died on her face. As a cleric, there was still time to save him but not much. “Your choice.”

“Give it here.”

Jarlaxle stared at her and tossed it past her into the snow. She swore, turning as though to go after it, only to still, looking back at Brien.

Jarlaxle stopped paying either of them any mind, running out onto the snow-blanketed ice, levitating any time the ice was too thin under his feet.

“ _Artemis_!” Jarlaxle called out, adjusting his eyepatch as he scanned the ice’s surface, eventually spotting a human-sized shape underneath, too far from where he’d fallen through. Jarlaxle reached for his hat, only to clench his teeth in frustration when he remembered it wasn’t there. His hands worked, instead, throwing daggers end over end to chip away at the ice until it cracked, frantically considering the damage the cold had done, _could do_ and how much time he had before his _abbil_ drowned or froze to death. If he hadn’t already. If the lightning hadn’t fried his brains too far beyond repair.

The ice’s surface broke, and a hand flew up to dig a dagger into the edge. Jarlaxle lowered himself enough to grab that hand, hauling his gasping partner up and out of the ice, letting Entreri cling to him as they floated. He winced at the bite of cold from his waterlogged human.

“I hate ice,” Entreri grated out with a stronger voice and less shivering than Jarlaxle would have expected. He marveled that his friend hadn’t lost his weapons. “I hate snow. I hate cold. I hate _you_.”

As Entreri clung to him and enumerated all the things he hated, Jarlaxle recalled his ring of cold protection and breathed a sigh of relief.

From the other side of the river, Jarlaxle heard Lorica cursing his name, having likely discovered his sleight of hand, that he’d only thrown a chunk of ice, not the sculpture.

“I fear we have made some enemies,” Jarlaxle said as they touched down on solid ground far out of sight, still holding tight to Entreri when he wobbled. The man still trembled, his lips blue, and Jarlaxle knew there was only so much the ring could help against. The ice water was seeping into Jarlaxle’s shirt, but he had his own ring of protection. “And we need to get you somewhere warm and dry.”

“Calimshan is warm and dry,” Entreri bit out. Jarlaxle pulled Entreri’s arm across his shoulders when the man didn’t steady himself.

“And you are welcome to walk to Calimshan on your own, if that is your desire.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you read the last chapter and thought it would turn into "skin-to-skin contact to warm up", didn't you? Cozying up by the fire, under the blankets and suddenly, "oh my, where is your hand going?"
> 
> Man, I fucking wish, but Artemis wasn't having it.
> 
> Jarlaxle's got his work cut out for him.

They had been forced to avoid the main road in case of pursuit, so “warm and dry” was something Jarlaxle had to make out of the first cave they found. The tent was their next option, though Entreri insisted they might end up buried in the snow if another storm passed them by.

With the fire burning, Jarlaxle could call their setup cozy, though he doubted Entreri would appreciate the observation. He’d watched earlier as Entreri had reached into his gauntlet and set out item after item, blanket, dry change of clothes, another blanket, a healing potion. Jarlaxle looked at the contents of his bag of holding, and a sad smile tilted his lips. His friend had made sure he was prepared, less for a situation like this and more in case Jarlaxle betrayed him.

Considering the number of precautions he had taken himself, Jarlaxle wasn’t surprised.

They had agreed to keep the statue in Entreri’s gauntlet, provided he could stretch the fabric over it, but for now he turned it over in his hands, shaking his head.

“I don’t know, either,” he said, still shivering slightly as he huddled close to both Jarlaxle and the fire, blankets piled over him. “There does not seem to be a switch or… It is old. And magic. Best not to tamper with it.” Carefully, he started fitting it into his gauntlet with shaking fingers.

“Old enough to be called a statue of ‘Kozah’ instead of Talos,” Jarlaxle murmured, considering the state of his friend. He wrapped an arm around him, rubbing his arm through the blanket, but felt Entreri still and tense at the touch. “In this, I agree. Best not to tamper with it.” Not himself, anyway.

“The whole situation is odd,” Entreri muttered, shooting Jarlaxle a furtive look as he worked the lip of the bag over the wider base, knowing they were going to have difficulties getting the thing out later. “Why did Ilnezhara have it out if it was so important? And what were these fools using it for? As a good luck charm for farmers?”

“I suspect it was more than that,” Jarlaxle replied. “Brien sounded as though he were expecting them to do something for him. It was a means of control.”

“A means of control from a god of chaos.” Entreri snorted. Slowly, he relaxed against Jarlaxle, not bullheaded enough to let his discomfort outweigh his body’s need for warmth. “They are not even trying to make sense.”

Jarlaxle chuckled. “Is that not the point of a god of chaos?”

“I suspect they do not _have_ a point, except to make my life more difficult.”

After living centuries in a culture devoted to a goddess of chaos, Jarlaxle would concede that, if not aloud.

 

Ilnezhara turned the piece over in her hands, long fingers with red lacquered nails inspecting every edge, every break, every flaw, until she nodded in satisfaction, handing it off to Tazmikella.

“It truly is an ugly thing,” she sighed. “Better suited to your shelves, I think.”

Tazmikella gave her a sour look but accepted the sculpture.

“It must be a piece of great power to earn such attention,” Jarlaxle said, a leading question if Entreri had ever heard one.

“Power?” Ilnezhara asked blankly. “I do not know about power. The statue has no magical properties. It is, however, an important artifact of great historical value, and it would _make_ a powerful artifact, if so enchanted.” She hesitated. “There are, however, rumors of a curse I have not seen come to fruition.”

“Oh, lovely,” Entreri muttered, hoping it hadn’t somehow tainted his bag of holding.

Tazmikella shook her head. “There is no curse, and it has not attached to you, in any case. The stone you have brought back is empty. It was stolen by Talossans, you say?”

“With heads as empty as that stone,” Entreri grumbled.

Tazmikella frowned, brows knit as she examined the sculpture. “Perhaps they consider it a holy artifact. I do worry about a Talossan cult right under our noses, however. Talos values destruction, and his followers tend to be either desperate, power-hungry, or insane. It is difficult to predict the actions of madmen.”

Entreri cut a sidelong glance at Jarlaxle and hummed in agreement.

“In any case, we have delivered!” Jarlaxle reminded them with a beaming smile. “I trust amends have been made?”

Ilnezhara blew out a dramatic sigh. “And here I was starting to enjoy the hat,” she said as though greatly put upon, taking the ridiculous purple hat off her head and setting it back on Jarlaxle’s.

Jarlaxle’s smile was impossibly wide when he turned it on Entreri. “Do I look appropriately dashing now?”

Words stuck in Entreri’s throat. His first thought was that he looked like _Jarlaxle_ , everything back in proper proportion as he adjusted the angle of its floppy brim. His second thought was to notice that warm, squeezing feeling in his chest again and decided he would blame it on indigestion.

“You look like yourself,” Entreri finally said. “Which is to say, like a lunatic.”

He would never admit that he actually _liked_ the hat.

As Jarlaxle laughed, Entreri felt the sisters’ eyes on him, and when he looked up, it was to see them watching him with twin curious looks. He wondered what they saw when they looked at him. _Dragons_ , he reminded himself, and he felt oddly exposed under their stares, inside their shop.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled as he retreated out the door.

 

Entreri hadn’t planned on picking up the flute, hadn’t planned on much of anything, really, except to get away from Jarlaxle. Coming back to their apartment was, perhaps, not the best way to do that, not with Jarlaxle’s belongings strewn haphazardly around the room, not with the silhouette he’d painted in the wall for target practice, not when the damned drow could walk in at any moment.

The sound of the flute filled the silence, and he wished the notes would overwrite his thoughts. Instead, the music seemed only to give them shape, taking shards of memory from each corner of his mind, arranging and rearranging them until they formed an image, a mosaic he was standing too close to see.

Some memories slid like oil through his mind— _memories of hands on skin and the crawling, sick feeling they left in their wake, memories of hot breath, the flash of a rotted smile_ —and he tried to shutter them, to shove them back into the grave he’d dug for them, but each time he tried to set the flute down, he couldn’t seem to let go. The other memories were more innocuous but just as scattered— _memories of touch that no longer made him feel sick, that did not make him feel anything at all_ —and woven through it all, that one damn drow wouldn’t leave him alone.

_“My name is not ‘Jarlaxle’,”_ Lorica had said.

Jarlaxle.

He’d been thinking of Jarlaxle when—

The door swept shut, and Entreri jumped, making the flute hit a sour note.

“It is good to see you keeping up with the flute, my friend,” came Jarlaxle’s greeting, “but such sad notes you play!”

“I am composing a dirge for your funeral,” Entreri drawled, tucking the flute back into his belt.

“And you are dressed for it too, I see.”

Entreri scowled, finding he had no snarky response to that. He shook off the lingering images behind his eyes, but found their impressions to be stubborn. The twisting feeling in his gut was unfamiliar. Or, rather, it was familiar from a long time ago, long enough that he didn’t know what it was.

Meanwhile Jarlaxle was chattering on about something, setting his hat and cloak on their hooks—Entreri was pleased, at least, that Jarlaxle wasn’t just throwing them wherever anymore—but Entreri was hardly listening. When Jarlaxle stripped off his wet shirt, Entreri stopped thinking altogether.

This was nothing new. They often changed around each other, and Entreri had seen Jarlaxle in that high-cut vest countless times—hells, it was what the drow had been wearing when Entreri had met him—yet he didn’t remember the taut, elegant muscles of Jarlaxle’s midriff being this distracting, nor the graceful flex of his biceps as he adjusted his bracers.

Feeling Entreri’s eyes on him, Jarlaxle turned to him with a friendly, if questioning, look on his face. “Need something, _abbil_?”

Entreri’s body didn’t feel like it was his, his mouth dry, skin hot, and what that meant hit him with all the subtlety of a hurricane. “My own room,” he snapped, again making his retreat and ignoring the startled look on Jarlaxle’s face.

 

Entreri slammed the flute onto Ilnezhara’s counter. “Your flute is defective.”

That was the only explanation for it, the only answer he could come to as he spent the night prowling the streets, determinedly not thinking about that damned peacock of a drow.

Either that or they were playing him, all of them, and then he’d have to kill Jarlaxle.

Ilnezhara was not impressed. “Careful, careful. That is not how one handles such a delicate instrument.” Her full lips pulled into a smirk. “Or do you need advice on how to handle someone else’s ‘flute’?”

Entreri stared at her, heat rushing to his face. “And what, exactly,” he said, his voice measured, ominously soft, “is that supposed to mean?”

Ilnezhara leaned across her counter, her smile creeping higher. “I think you know exactly what that means, my darling Entreri, or you would not be here, beating your instrument against my counter.”

The bell on the door jingled, and they both looked up to see Tazmikella, arms folded against the cold. “You looked rather distressed,” she explained to Entreri, who didn’t trust the concern on her face, no matter how convincing. “Is all well?”

“Master Entreri says his flute is defective,” Ilnezhara said sweetly, and Entreri snatched back the instrument with a baleful glare.

Entreri looked to Tazmikella as the saner of the sisters, but even she was struggling not to smile. Then the bell rang again, and in walked Jarlaxle.

Entreri groaned.

“Oh look, everyone’s here!” Jarlaxle chirped, shaking the snow from his boots. “You were not having too much fun without me, I hope? I—!” He cut himself off abruptly when Entreri shoved past him back out into the street, the bell rattling against the door as it slammed shut.

Through the window, Jarlaxle watched him storm off in amazement.

“Something the matter?” Ilnezhara asked, eyes sparkling in a way that said she was trying not to laugh.

Jarlaxle wondered at that as he pulled his gaze away. “My friend has been acting strangely of late.”

The sisters exchanged a look, one that made him feel as though he were the butt of some unspoken joke.

“What?” He couldn’t stop the annoyance from creeping into his tone.

Tazmikella cleared her throat, addressing her sister more than Jarlaxle. “Perhaps playing the flute has given him an appreciation for the instrument?”

Ilnezhara pursed her lips around a giggle.

Jarlaxle was lost. “The… flute?”

Ilnezhara gave him a pitying look while Tazmikella simply shook her head in amazement.

“They are both so clueless!” Tazmikella threw up her hands in exasperation. “They will keep circling each other until the human dies of old age!”

“Circling?” Jarlaxle was rarely flummoxed, and he did not much like the feeling. “Entreri and myself?”

Ilnezhara slinked over and pressed herself against his arm, reaching up to tweak the edge of his hat. He tensed, in case she tried to take it again. “Perhaps you should have your lieutenant procure an item to let you see what’s behind you, that you might better see how Entreri looks at you when you are not looking.”

“I… what?” Jarlaxle narrowed his eyes. His first thought was one of fear, that she meant Entreri meant to betray him, as any drow ally would, but then he went back over the rest of the conversation and sucked in a harsh breath. “Are you quite finished with your jokes?” He pulled his arm free.

Tazmikella shook her head. “It is no joke. The flute was to help him better understand himself, and it seems to have had… some unexpected results.”

Jarlaxle flushed hotly under his dark skin. He glanced back at the door his friend had left through. “ _Artemis_?” The thought of his dour friend entertaining any sexual thoughts unprompted was foreign, let alone thoughts of _him_.

“Oh, come now,” Tazmikella tutted. “You have been saying all along how you should like to find someone for Entreri. It would seem your answer is simpler than you realized!”

“If it’s any enticement,” Ilnezhara went on, smoothing out Jarlaxle’s sleeve, “we all know the man knows his way around a sword.”

Jarlaxle just stared at her, mouth agape, and the sisters’ laughter filled the store.

 

Jarlaxle was almost unsettled by how eagerly the dragon sisters wanted to foist them together. He wondered if he and Entreri were simply pawns on their chessboard, maneuvering less to win and more to entertain. Being so manipulated was not a particularly new feeling but neither was it welcome.

And yet Jarlaxle found himself actually considering it.

Entreri had finally stopped running away every time Jarlaxle entered the room, and now he was engrossed in his dagger, twisting it about in defense against some unseen foe, going over the same move, the same block, the same strike over and over until he had the angle just right. Jarlaxle watched him furtively from across the room, a book in his lap and his eyepatch facing Entreri.

The man was certainly pleasing to look at, with a fine face and clever hands Jarlaxle could see being put to creative uses. Unpracticed, likely, considering how rarely Entreri indulged himself, but Jarlaxle was a patient teacher. The man could certainly use the release, and it was practical, really, considering how often they were on the road, with villages of willing maidens few and far between.

Yes. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

Jarlaxle took a few minutes to appreciate his view of Artemis, considered his lean body in this new light, a little more solid than an elf’s but still appealingly lithe, pictured the muscled perfection Jarlaxle knew was under all that fabric, and found himself licking his lips. What would it be like, he wondered, to strip that man of his careful control?

“I can feel you watching me,” Entreri said without looking up, without even slowing his movements.

“Perhaps I am enjoying the view,” Jarlaxle said, testing the waters.

Entreri’s movements did stutter then, and he sent Jarlaxle a narrowed glare. So suspicious, still.

Jarlaxle shut his book with a loud clap. “Spar with me,” he suggested, changing tack. A pawn on a chessboard could only move forward, and Jarlaxle suspected this would take some finesse.

 

The roof was icy, but it was nearby and as close to open and flat as they could find in a city like Heliogabalus. After that disastrous battle by the river, Jarlaxle suggested they could use the practice.

“You just want to play to your advantage,” Entreri replied as he ducked under Jarlaxle’s thrown dagger, twisting his foot out to the side when it continued to skid, leaning forward to keep his balance.

Jarlaxle tutted where he hovered over the ice. “I am just using the resources at my disposal,” he said primly, “but, if it would make you feel better…” He alighted on the roof properly, a flick of his wrists turning the daggers in his hands into swords. He half-ran, half-skated towards Entreri, perfectly balanced until he crashed through a wall of ash, realizing too late that he had gained too much momentum before barreling into the chimney.

As he steadied himself, it took Jarlaxle a moment to recognize the wheezing sound coming from Entreri as a laugh, so rarely did he hear it.

“That does make me feel better, yes. Thank you.”

Jarlaxle came at him again, skidding low to tangle their legs, the ice messing with Entreri’s reflexes just enough to keep him from skipping away in time, and down they both went. Jarlaxle rolled with the motion and landed on top of Entreri, straddling his hips, a sword at his throat. Jarlaxle found he liked the look of this, Artemis under him, flushed from exertion, gray eyes intent on him.

“You see?” Jarlaxle said, voice just a tad rougher than expected. “Practice.”

“Draw,” Entreri countered, pointedly looking down, and Jarlaxle followed his gaze to find Entreri’s dagger an inch away from his crotch. At the wicked amusement in his eyes, Jarlaxle wondered if this was the man’s version of flirting, and suddenly he had concerns.

Jarlaxle sat back, retracting his sword in surrender. “No need to punish the world just because you lost a round.”

Entreri rolled his eyes, but he shifted uncomfortably under Jarlaxle’s strategically placed ass. “Yes, well, could the ‘world’ get off me, now?”

Jarlaxle was about to offer a quip about “getting off” that would likely get him punched, when movement caught his eye. He looked up at the horizon, at the black smoke rising in the distance. A shove from Entreri reminded him to move, and he clambered to his feet, dusting himself off. “Which direction would you say that is coming from?”

Rising as well, Entreri followed his gaze, eyebrows knitting at what he found. “South,” he said. “Towards Impiltur.”

They exchanged a look.

 


	5. Chapter 5

“It is not our problem,” Entreri said for the third time as he set their plates down on the table. Jarlaxle still didn’t seem to be listening.

“A punishing streak of lightning setting fire to the village?” Jarlaxle pointed out. Again. “We can guess whom to blame, and we already have experience with them both.”

“Lightning has, in fact, been known to occur on its own,” Entreri drawled, though even he knew that was not the case here. “And this makes them King Gareth’s problem now, not ours. We were commissioned—excuse me, _coerced_ —into retrieving an idol, which we did. The job is finished.”

Jarlaxle slid a piece of parchment across the table, and Entreri paused in his chewing to scowl at it. On the piece of parchment were the likenesses of Lorica and Brien with a bounty on their heads of 500 gold each.

“A new job,” Jarlaxle said, eyes gleaming in a way that said there was no way anyone was going to dissuade him.

“A pittance,” Entreri grumbled, all but stabbing his meat.

“To my well-endowed friend, perhaps,” Jarlaxle teased just to watch him nearly choke. “Well?”

Entreri took a drink to wash down the offending bite. “We will need to do something about that stoneskin of hers. I do not think it is a spell.”

“I did not see much magic on her. Perhaps it is attached to her mace, somehow?”

Indeed, Entreri had only been able to strike her when she had gotten her mace caught in the door. “Then I will detach her arm from her body.”

Jarlaxle shrugged one shoulder. “I was considering detaching her mace from her hand, but I suppose your way is just as efficient. The notice says nothing about keeping her in one piece. Or alive, for that matter.”

Entreri hummed in disinterested acknowledgement, and Jarlaxle found himself wondering at the sisters’ analysis of Entreri’s… _inclinations_. In moments like these, the only indication that anything was different was in the way Entreri staunchly avoided looking at him except when necessary. That was generally the opposite reaction one would expect.

“Insane, power-hungry, or desperate,” Jarlaxle mused aloud, repeating Tazmikella’s assessment of Talossans. “Which are they, do you think?”

“I am not sure, but I could tell you which one you are.”

Jarlaxle rested his chin on his folded hands and smiled at Artemis across the table. “ _Desperate_ for you to appreciate my genius?”

“ _Insane_ to think you have any.”

Jarlaxle chuckled and let the man eat the rest of his meal in peace. They would leave the following morning, they decided.

 

Entreri knew the silence would be short-lived, and sure enough, Jarlaxle started chattering again on the way back to their apartment. The drow was walking close enough that their arms brushed, inching closer each time Entreri inched away, so that they ended up walking directly under the awnings of a few shops and directly into some of their merchandise.

Had Jarlaxle always walked this close? Was he only just now aware of it?

“That scar around her neck…” Jarlaxle was saying, not seeming to notice the way he was practically herding Entreri into the wall. “What caused that, do you think?”

“Shackles,” Entreri answered without hesitation. “Crude ones bite into the skin. I suspect she wore hers for a long time.”

Jarlaxle nodded. He had seen such marks in Menzoberranzan, but, “Slavery? In Damara?”

Entreri shrugged. “It is frowned upon but not illegal. And she is not necessarily from Damara.”

“Her accent says she is not, yet Damara is the target of her anger.”

Entreri wondered if it was her age or her sex that led Jarlaxle to assume she was leading. “You are discounting the possibility that she may just be insane.”

“I am not,” Jarlaxle protested. “But even insanity has its roots somewhere.”

Entreri was about to question the roots of Jarlaxle’s insanity—a dangerous line of questioning, in hindsight—when he stopped short, spotting the lumpy snowman in front of their apartment. Its stick arms held what appeared to be a pair of icicles, one long and thin like a sword, the other considerably shorter, like a dagger. Pine made for thick, angry eyebrows over a mouth carved into an exaggerated scowl.

“Ah!” chirped Jarlaxle, stepping forward to gesture grandly at his masterpiece. “You see, you would not make a snow-dwarf with me, so I have elected to make my own snow-treri. A ring of protection against heat should keep him spry for a little longer, but so far he has not been any more cheerful than the original. The resemblance is uncanny, is it not?”

Jarlaxle turned back to Entreri only to get a fistful of snow in the face.

 

With Entreri proving as difficult as ever, Jarlaxle elected to spend the night—or at least a few energetic hours of the night—with Ilnezhara, who seemed altogether far too amused by his predicament.

“If anything, he is more distant,” he said as they walked into the cool night after. He had suggested she take the Kozah figurine out of her sister’s shop, just in case, so she walked with him to his apartment on the way to Wall’s Around. He had of course offered to walk her to her shop, as any gentleman would, but she had simply laughed. “Are you certain?”

“Are you not?” Ilnezhara asked around a laugh, her arm hooked through his. Her velvet shoes were not at all practical in the sludge, yet they stayed miraculously clean. “Does Jarlaxle doubt his charms?”

Jarlaxle huffed. “Of course not, but he is…”

“A challenge,” Ilnezhara supplied for him.

That made him smile. “Yes.”

“I was only half joking,” she went on, “when I suggested an item to see behind you, if you so doubt me. But, perhaps I could save you a step.” She reached into the sash of her gown and pulled out a small mirror, about the size of her palm.

“How innovative,” Jarlaxle drawled, even as he took it.

“ _Look_ at it before you bore me with sarcasm. Your assassin is rubbing off on you, and not in the way you want him to.”

Jarlaxle gave her a droll look before peering into the compact. What he saw was not his reflection, but the world behind him. He paused for a moment, finding walking to be disorienting with this conflicting view, and he found he had to lift aside his eyepatch to avoid a headache. “Oh, how intriguing!”

“It is a loan,” she warned him.

He grinned and kissed her cheek, tucking the compact into a pocket she didn’t know was there. “My thanks.”

They turned onto Jarlaxle’s street, and she was about to ask him about the thieves he and Entreri were pursuing, when Jarlaxle stuttered to a stop, a stunned look on his face. He burst into wild guffaws the next moment, and Ilnezhara followed his stare to the pair of snowmen in front of his apartment—or snowman and snowelf, she should say, the one in front sporting triangular ice shards in place of ears, the clump of snow on its head resembling a familiar wide-brimmed hat with a tuft of pigeon feathers stuck into the side. Its mouth was wide open in surprise, for the scowling snowman behind it had plunged an icicle into its back.

Not one to be outdone, Jarlaxle immediately set to work on the scene, a giddy sort of glee on his face as he shuffled snow around. Ilnezhara watched in bemusement, finding herself all but forgotten.

A tap on Jarlaxle’s shoulder reminded him she was there. “I have a better idea,” she said, red lips twisting in a wicked smile.

 

In the morning light, Jarlaxle surveyed their—her, really—work and flushed, coughing awkwardly into his fist. The two snowpeople were in as amorous an embrace as clumps of snow could be, the pair of icicles that had been Entreri’s weapons repurposed for a lewder use.

“I still think I should have gotten the sword,” Jarlaxle said.

Ilnezhara tried to hide her snickers behind her hand. “Oh? It looks to me like that is exactly what you are getting!”

Jarlaxle opened his mouth and then closed it again, a laugh bursting out of him as he conceded the point. “Oh, he is so going to kill me.”

Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately for Jarlaxle’s well-being—the guard came by soon after and politely asked them to take down the display. The snowman and snowelf went back to dueling, as Jarlaxle had originally intended, and Entreri was none the wiser.

 * * *

Their quarry made the chase easy, lighting up the horizon like a constellation, an arc of destruction within sight of Heliogabalus’ walls. By the time Jarlaxle and Entreri returned to Gusev’s Inn, the bounty on their heads had doubled.

Gusev was playing a game of dice with one of his patrons when they swept in, and he groaned at the sight of them. Entreri cleared his throat, arching an eyebrow pointedly to remind Gusev of his terms, and Gusev stared at him a moment before pulling his lips back in a horrifying impression of a smile.

“Oof.” Jarlaxle winced, leaning into Entreri to mutter, “I might pay him to _not_ smile ever again.”

Entreri huffed, shuffling to the side so that Jarlaxle’s arm was no longer pressed against his. A bemused look from Jarlaxle said he’d noticed, but even the smallest bit of contact with the drow was getting worryingly distracting.

“And what d’ye want this time?” Gusev asked, folding his stringy arms in a stance that fell pitifully short of intimidating. At Entreri’s scowl, he shrugged and added, “What? Ye paid me to smile, not to be friendly.”

“You get charged for everything now,” Entreri mumbled.

“My good Gusev,” Jarlaxle said, the humor leaving his voice. “At this very moment, a pair of lunatics are coming here who care only for destruction. They have been destroying small villages and hamlets all along this road, and right now my associate and I are the only things that stand in the way of your lovely inn being added to that list. An ounce of courtesy would not be remiss.”

“Not the only thing,” said a voice behind them, belonging to a grizzled man with a two-handed sword strapped to his back.

Looking around, Entreri noticed a difference in the clientele. Where before there had been simple laborers and merchants, now Gusev’s patrons were armed and armored, faces bearing the wear of the road and the batterings of many a battle.

“Bounty hunters,” Entreri said through his teeth, with a disgust Jarlaxle found amusing considering their current occupation. Louder, he added, “Are you volunteering to be a human shield?”

The grizzled man sat back, eyes narrowed. He was tall, thick enough with muscle that his chair creaked ominously beneath him. “That is an awful lot of attitude for such a small man.”

Entreri stared the man down. It was a look that promised murder, one that made even the large man rock back in his chair, one hand twitching towards his sword.

The warmth of a hand on his shoulder seeped through Entreri’s cloak, and he blinked, meeting Jarlaxle’s glance. He assumed Jarlaxle was going to tell him to stand down, but then the drow spoke.

“You know, most of the men I know who carry such large… _weaponry_ are compensating for something.” That wiped the rest of the smirk off the large man’s face but earned a cackle from the tables in the corner. “But, naturally, you are not one such person, yes? You are, shall we say, ‘big’ enough to allow us to eat our meal in peace?”

Even the man’s companions started to smirk, but he gritted his teeth and gestured grandly at an open table at the far side of the room. Jarlaxle tipped his hat in thanks then winked at Entreri, and how the drow managed to do that with one eye covered was a mystery even to him. Jarlaxle didn’t take his hand from Entreri’s shoulder until they sat down, and even then Entreri could still feel his handprint.

Gusev went back to playing dice, sending over a serving wench, who smiled at them both, showing an unnecessary amount of cleavage as she set down their drinks. Entreri braced himself for the commentary, for Jarlaxle to either all but shove her into his lap or to pull her into his own, but instead Jarlaxle just gave her a long, considering look and went back to business.

“They are an annoyance but no concern,” Jarlaxle said in Drow, speaking slowly and clearly enough to make sure Entreri understood. “They will all make fine human shields, as you say.”

He caught Jarlaxle’s gaze pausing on the one or two female warriors of the troupe across the room, was surprised again when that one look was the end of it. “Planning on testing the sturdiness of a few of those ‘shields’?” he prompted, only to wonder why he had.

Jarlaxle’s lips curled as though he were smiling at his own private joke. “They do not interest me.”

Entreri hummed, unconvinced. “Concerned they might resist your charms?”

Jarlaxle cocked his head, offered Entreri a long, slow smile that, on anyone else at any other time, Entreri would have read as seductive. “Ah, _abbil_. No one is immune to my charms.”

Entreri felt as though Jarlaxle were seeing through him in that moment, and returning that stare was like having his blood set on fire.

Jarlaxle chuckled, looking up when the serving wench returned with their food, and Entreri remembered how to breathe.

This was getting ridiculous.

 

“At their current rate, they should be here early morning,” Jarlaxle mused aloud as they climbed the rickety stairs, walking behind Entreri and taking the opportunity to appreciate how well Artemis’ trousers fit across his shapely backside. It was a bit hypnotic, watching him walk, and Jarlaxle nearly lost his train of thought. “Ah yes! That reminds me…”

A touch to Entreri’s arm encouraged him to pause when they reached the landing, and Jarlaxle took advantage of the narrow hallway to stand unusually close. He reached into his hat, pretending not to notice the way Entreri tensed up, like a skittish deer getting ready to bolt, and pulled out a bracelet, a band of silver simple enough not to offend his friend’s sensibilities.

“Protection against lightning,” Jarlaxle said in reply to Entreri’s curious look, holding up the bracelet for his inspection. “I have one as well.” He set the hat back on his head, apologizing when he accidentally smacked Entreri in the face with the feather, and wiggled the fingers of his free hand, palm up, with a pointed look at Entreri’s wrist. “Allow me?”

Jarlaxle caught his hesitation, and it was painful, really, the way the man tensed and started at each touch. He didn’t recall this kind of skittishness with the women Jarlaxle had brought him—reluctance, certainly, but not skittishness—and he wished he knew what was going on inside Entreri’s head.

Eventually Entreri let Jarlaxle take his arm, fingers light as he rolled up his sleeve and hooked the bracelet’s clasp around his wrist, certain to touch Entreri’s skin more than necessary. “There. Practical _and_ fashionable, and it matches those lovely eyes of yours.”

Where a maiden might have blushed, Entreri rolled his eyes, and Jarlaxle chuckled, expecting no less.

Entreri cleared his throat. “May I have my arm back?” he asked the spot on the wall just to the right of Jarlaxle.

Jarlaxle realized he was still holding Entreri’s wrist and released it with a dramatic flourish. “If you must. I imagine you need it.”

Entreri gave him an odd look, twisting his wrist as he adjusted to the bracelet’s weight, and continued to the end of the hall, where they had rented the last room available.

The room was smaller than they had expected, but Jarlaxle was ever one to see a silver lining.

“Oh no!” he said, struggling to contain his glee. “There is only one bed! Whatever shall we do?”

Entreri gave him another odd look. “I will sleep on the floor.” He grabbed up a pillow and a blanket from the bed and set them on the rug while Jarlaxle watched in amazement and more than a little frustration.

“Now, _abbil_ , there’s no need for that! Look, the bed is plenty large enough for two. I will stay on my side, and—”

“I will sleep on the floor.”

Jarlaxle sighed. He had his work cut out for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dunking him in the river, putting you two in a room with one bed... Jarlaxle, I swear I'm trying to be a good wingman, here.


	6. Chapter 6

“Would that I could have your abilities for a day, my friend,” Jarlaxle sighed, his breath misting in front of him.

Kimmuriel twitched an eyebrow on an otherwise expressionless face. He was not thrilled with meeting on the roof, out in the cold, and he stayed on his side of the portal as they conferred.

“Your obsession with the _rivvil_ is noted, if not understood,” Kimmuriel said.

“Obsession?” Jarlaxle replied with some amusement. “Hardly.”

“What would you call it, then?”

“Professional curiosity.”

“Professional.”

Jarlaxle conceded with a smile and a shrug. “General curiosity, then. How have you fared with the statue?”

“There was strong magic here, once.” Kimmuriel pulled out the idol of Kozah, handing it to Jarlaxle through the portal. “Borrowing” from a dragon was, perhaps, not the wisest decision Jarlaxle had ever made, but he would rather know what they were dealing with.

“Once?” Jarlaxle prompted.

“But no more. Its curse—if that is what it was—was discharged or lost. Now it is as your client says: empty as stone.”

Jarlaxle turned the statue over in his hands, looking into its staring, vacant eyes. “And yet I doubt our dear Lorica was interested in its historical value. Ilnezhara did not know much about its provenance, but it is ancient. Do we, perhaps, know where it was found? What dig site?”

Kimmuriel was not impressed by the question. “I am not an archeologist.”

“Well, I suppose I cannot expect you to know everything.”

Kimmuriel ignored the comment and cocked his head, his stare glazing over in a way that said he was focusing inward.

“What is it?” Jarlaxle asked.

“Your human is distressed. He is… dreaming rather loudly.” He blinked, the slightest curl of his lip showing his distaste. “That flute will break him if you are not careful.”

 

By the time Jarlaxle returned to their room, Entreri was awake, though only just, his hair disheveled, beads of sweat at his temple and a spooked look on his face that he schooled the moment he saw Jarlaxle.

“Good morning, my friend!” Jarlaxle said cheerfully, pretending he hadn’t noticed.

“Is it?” Entreri grumbled, looking somehow surlier than usual as he shoved the blanket off his lap.

“Is it good or is it morning?” Jarlaxle’s smile slipped when he looked down to see the flute in his hands. “Did you _sleep_ with that?”

Entreri blinked, jumping and throwing the flute away from him the moment he realized it was there. Jarlaxle winced when it clattered noisily against the wall, but it seemed unharmed.

“The answer is yes to both, by the way.” Jarlaxle kept his tone cheerful as he plucked up the flute, making as though to hand it to Entreri before pausing, setting it down on the bed instead. Entreri barely seemed to notice, rising to his feet and wiping a hand over his face. A knot of concern sat heavy in Jarlaxle’s stomach, and he asked what he had been trying not to. “Are you quite well, Artemis?”

Entreri just shot him an annoyed look at the question.

“Sleeping on the floor was, perhaps, not the wisest idea?” Jarlaxle needled, reflecting that this was not the wisest decision he had ever made either.

“I have slept on worse to no ill effects,” Entreri snapped. “And how is dear Kimmuriel?”

Jarlaxle tilted his head.

“I assume that is where you were.” Entreri gave the melting snow on his boots a pointed look. “Unless, of course, you were playing in the snow again.”

“Gusev is much more sporting about snowball fights,” Jarlaxle replied with a straight face.

Entreri’s lips twitched up into something like a smile. “And how sporting is Kimmuriel, do you think?”

Jarlaxle couldn’t quite bite back his own grin at the image: refined Kimmuriel getting a snowball to the face. “I could find out for you.”

Entreri chuffed, and his body language eased in increments, only to wind tight again when Jarlaxle pressed his luck and stepped into his space. Jarlaxle pretended not to notice the way his hand twitched towards a dagger that wasn’t there and tutted, reaching up to smooth down Artemis’ sleep-mussed hair.

_Lovely_ , Jarlaxle had called his eyes, and they were in this light, the same color as the ice-gray dawn. Lovely even when they watched Jarlaxle so guardedly.

“Is this out of some envy from your lack of hair?” Entreri quipped, though Jarlaxle noted the unsteady quality to his voice.

Jarlaxle’s fingers tangled in the shorter hairs at the back of Entreri’s neck, and he smiled. Artemis wore his sarcasm like armor, and the man was tenser than a bowstring under his touch. Jarlaxle wondered if a kiss would send him shooting like an arrow through the window.

A boom of thunder interrupted them before Jarlaxle could find out, and he hissed a curse through his teeth as he pulled away. He was getting rather tired of this woman ruining the mood.

Entreri cleared his throat. “We should…”

“Yes.”

 

They met Gusev in the tavern downstairs. He was still in his nightshirt, his face ashen, trying to stay out of the way of the bustle of activity his home had become.

“Master Gusev,” Jarlaxle said with a calm at odds with the ruckus around them, “perhaps you and your wife should take shelter in the basement, yes?” A gloved hand on Gusev’s shoulder gently steered him towards the cellar door.

“I… I don’t have a wife.”

“A man with your charms?” Jarlaxle asked, dramatically placing a hand over his chest. “A travesty!”

The look Gusev shot him said Jarlaxle was the only travesty here, and Entreri smirked as he watched the man shuffle down the stairs.

Entreri and Jarlaxle were the only ones not surprised by the timing, to go by the varying states of dress they found their fellow bounty hunters in. A balding dwarf set up a heavy crossbow against the edge of the window, squinting out into the gray dawn, while his companions adjusted their armor and beat their chests.

Jarlaxle and Entreri exchanged an amused glance as they slipped out the door.

“They have set themselves up well,” Jarlaxle noted brightly. “All huddled together in one building!”

Entreri gave him a wry look. “Well for us, you mean.”

“Of course!”

Entreri slipped into the shadows between buildings, while Jarlaxle levitated to get a better vantage point. The thunder had come with lightning, a barn at the edge of the hamlet ablaze, sending shadows dancing across the snow, and Entreri had to wonder at that choice of target. They had had the advantage of surprise and wasted it on a barn?

“Anything?” he whispered up to Jarlaxle, who simply frowned. He disappeared, only to return a minute later on foot, walking briskly.

“Get your horse,” he said, a hand on Entreri’s arm pulling him along.

“What?”

“I just spotted a red head streaking away on horseback. Alone. He seems to expect we will give chase, and one of us should. You have your gauntlet, yes?”

“Obviously. And you?”

Jarlaxle beamed. “Why, I have all my new friends to help me catch our other quarry!”

Entreri snorted but took off for the barn.

 

Even with a fold of his cloak over his face, the cold air stung as he rode. Brien’s hood kept slipping, and that flash of red against the gray and white acted as a beacon. Once he realized he was being pursued, Brien started throwing spells over his shoulder.

A waste of energy, Entreri reflected, even as he pulled hard on the reins to avoid the fireball that had just streaked into the snow in front of them.

“I hate mages,” he muttered, catching a string of magic missiles in his gauntlet.

That woman must have healed his severed leg, and, it was difficult to tell from this angle, but Entreri suspected that Brien was riding the horse he’d left behind at the edge of the river. Entreri knew that horse was fast, but the one he was riding was better rested, steadily closing the gap until Entreri could see the fear in the mage’s eyes.

Pulling alongside him, Entreri offered him a smile that was all teeth, only to disappear behind a wall of ash. Brien stopped casting mid-spell, confused, and that heartbeat of hesitation was all Entreri needed as he tackled the mage off the horse, sending them both tumbling into the snow. Brien struggled like an eel against Entreri’s grip, and he pressed a hand sparking white with electricity against Entreri’s chest, a shock that would have surely stopped his heart if not for the bracelet that absorbed it, glowing white-hot in answer.

Entreri hissed, smelling charred fabric, and shoved the boy face-first into the snow, bringing his dagger around to nick his throat. Finally, Brien froze, eyes comically wide as he fought not to breathe too harshly and press the blade deeper into his neck.

Entreri watched the mage’s fingers in case he started casting, his voice deathly calm when next he spoke. “Whether I bring you in alive or dead is up to you. Right now, dead would be less of a hassle for me, unless you can convince me you’ll behave.”

Entreri looked closer at Brien, at the strip of skin that shivered against his blade, and frowned when he spotted a familiar scar. At least Brien had tried to hide his under a high-necked coat.

 

With a sip of a potion, Jarlaxle was invisible, rainbow cloak, garish purple hat and all, and he slipped back into the tavern and glided between the tables, moving unseen among the “competition”. Splashing one man’s ale into the face of another was enough to start a brawl in one corner, which was distraction enough for Jarlaxle to flick his wand at the crossbow in the window, heavy goop fixing the bolt in place. Flicking a fingernail against the knife one warrior was idly spinning was enough to send it slicing across her fingers, more goop fixed a half-orc’s hand to her sheathed sword, and retying the shoelaces of a halfling was enough to send him stumbling.

The room erupted in chaos in a matter of moments, and Jarlaxle paused by the bar just long enough to slip a fine brandy into his hat before sneaking back out the door.

In the midst of the pandemonium, they missed the challenge Lorica issued to them just outside the door.

“Face me, cowards!” she roared as she beat her mace against her shield for only Jarlaxle to hear. “Face the wrath of the storm and pray that Talos does not find you wanting!”

She had her mace raised to the heavens, the determined snarl on her face twisting towards confusion as she squinted into the window. Slowly, her mace drooped.

“What in Talos’ name…?” she muttered.

“Did you come here expecting to die?”

Lorica jumped, holding her mace in front of her defensively as she whirled, searching for the owner of that voice. “What?”

“You seem _disappointed_.” Jarlaxle faded back into existence, making her jump again when she saw he was standing right next to her. “One is not generally disappointed when one’s enemies defeat themselves.”

“ _You!_ ” Lorica growled even as she swung, her mace striking his shoulder only to glance right off. She stared at him, startled, when he didn’t so much as flinch.

Jarlaxle tutted as he slipped a pair of daggers into his palm. “They never want to talk,” he sighed aloud to himself. “Why do they never want to talk?”

He threw his daggers under her next swing, a mighty hit that would have taken his jaw clean off if not for Kimmuriel’s protection. When they separated, neither was harmed.

“This could take a while,” Jarlaxle said, shrugging as though this were just a friendly sparring match. “Some light conversation might make it feel like it’s going by faster.”

“Do you always talk this much?”

Jarlaxle smiled, throwing a pair of daggers at her eyes as his shield absorbed the next blow. The daggers plinked off but made her flinch. “Now you sound like my partner.”

“Your lover? I will kill him next!”

Jarlaxle could feel the next impact in his teeth, the shield around him nearly vibrating with energy. She was going to end this conversation one way or the other if she kept this up. “I think you will find we are both difficult men to kill, and by now my capable friend has likely taken care of your less capable friend. If you came here to die, you are well on your way toward achieving that goal.”

Jarlaxle sidestepped her next blow instead of accepting it. “But I have no desire to kill you, Lorica.”

“This from a man throwing daggers at my face?” Lorica sneered.

“Knowing they would not harm you? Yes.”

She circled him but did not strike, and Jarlaxle knew he had her.

“Are you not a bounty hunter?”

“On occasion,” Jarlaxle said with a tip of his head. “What I am right now is curious. You do not appear deranged, and these attacks do not appear random. Yet, I fail to see how striking down helpless villages would benefit you.”

“Ask the idol you took from us.”

Her mace came down heavy as a form of punctuation, but Jarlaxle side-stepped it neatly.

“Ah, so there _is_ a personal connection?” he said, brightening. “You know something of its curse, perhaps?”

When she started chanting, Jarlaxle sighed.

“None of that, now,” he said, splaying a hand across her shield and releasing his shield’s pent-up energy, knocking the breath from her words and sending her skidding backwards, her ass leaving a deep furrow in the snow. He marveled at the strength of her mace’s protection that it only dazed her.

The crunch of snow behind him was Jarlaxle’s only warning before a crossbow bolt whistled past his ear.

“Ah!” he said brightly as he turned around to see a few of the other bounty hunters shouldering their way out of the tavern. “I was wondering when you would join us!”

“Kill the drow, too,” the half-orc said to her companion, some of the goop still stuck to her fingers.

“And again, straight to killing,” he sighed aloud to himself, wishing for a moment that Entreri were there to exchange a commiserating look with. He spun around a second bolt, twisting one of his rings as he did so, and a second Jarlaxle appeared to his right, darting off in the opposite direction.

When he spotted the torches coming around the back of the inn, Jarlaxle thought there might be more of them, until he spotted the wands in the torch-bearers’ hands and the bolts of lightning that shot out from them.

He lost Lorica in the ensuing mess.

 

Entreri returned to pandemonium. Bolts of lightning streaked through the air in haphazard patterns, there were bounty hunters and crazed villagers screaming in pain and rage, and everything was on fire.

He also spotted at least five Jarlaxles running around.

Entreri took in the scene, mouth agape as he sat astride his horse. He held the reins for Brien’s horse, the mage bound, gagged, and slung over the saddle, and he turned to address the closest Jarlaxle.

“What in the nine hells did you _do_?”

A hand lightly tapped his foot, and Entreri kicked out on instinct, hitting the brim of the real Jarlaxle’s hat and pushing it back on his head.

“I resent that you assume this is my fault,” Jarlaxle said, righting his hat as he slipped around to the other horse, climbing up behind Brien’s slumped form.

“Is it?”

“Well, not _all_ of it!” Jarlaxle tilted his head as he considered Brien’s unmoving body. “Is he dead?”

“No. Just made a spell of his misfire.” Entreri waved his gauntleted hand. “And the woman?” Entreri suspected he knew the answer in the wake of the bloodbath in front of him. He could see her nowhere.

“Has lost her partner and, in a few minutes, will have lost her small ‘congregation’.” The lightning bolts were getting fewer and farther between. Jarlaxle kicked his horse into motion, and Entreri followed. “I knew they had followers but did not expect them to be so… well-equipped.”

“I suspect Lorica thought much the same of you?” Entreri drawled.

Jarlaxle flashed him a smile as his horse’s trot turned into a run. “Well, you and I are both exceptionally well-endowed, my friend!”


	7. Chapter 7

They would have to surrender their quarry at the gates, so Jarlaxle insisted they stall for a little while longer, setting up camp in a cave so they could question Brien. To help them find Lorica, Jarlaxle had said, but Entreri suspected it was more to sate the drow’s curiosity.

Of course, Brien would have to be awake for that, so they settled in for the long haul as they waited. Between the fire and his ring of cold protection, Entreri could barely feel the cold. He did, however, feel the way a certain drow kept inching closer. Chewing a piece of jerky, Entreri shot Jarlaxle a sidelong look only to notice the drow visibly shivering, cloak pulled tight around him.

At Entreri’s suspicious look, Jarlaxle put on a self-deprecating smile and wiggled the ringed fingers of one hand. “In all the excitement, I seem to have lost a few of my rings, not the least of which one enchanted against cold, much like yours.” His teeth chattered a moment later as almost an afterthought.

“That is unfortunate,” Entreri said as though he did not care. Still the shivering drow made a pathetic sight as he scooted closer, uncovered eye large and pleading. Entreri knew better than to trust that look, hackles rising at the close proximity of another male even as his brain reminded him that this was _Jarlaxle_.

He wasn’t sure if that made the closeness better or worse.

After a few moments more of that pleading stare, Entreri sighed as though greatly put-upon, one arm lifting his cloak in invitation. Jarlaxle’s face lit with joy, and he ducked under Entreri’s arm, pressing himself tight to Entreri’s side. This close, Entreri could feel him shivering as he awkwardly lowered his arm to rest on Jarlaxle’s shoulders, spreading his heavy cloak around them both.

“My thanks, _abbil_.” Jarlaxle nestled in comfortably, not quite able to keep the grin off his face. “This is quite cozy, is it not?”

Entreri had only ever had women burrow against him like this, and that was rare and always before or after sex. The association was not helping him banish the effects of that defective flute. “I have other adjectives for this,” he muttered as though he could think of any. _Awkward_ , perhaps. But also _warm_ and…

There was that squeezing feeling in his chest again, and Entreri hated this, that Jarlaxle had managed to burrow deep enough under his skin that he would allow this simple contact. Inch by inch, Entreri’s body relaxed, the arm laid stiffly across Jarlaxle’s shoulders pulling him tighter into a more comfortable position.

Jarlaxle all but purred like a contented cat, extraordinarily pleased with himself as he felt Entreri start to relax. The man was wound tighter than a corkscrew when it came to touch, and the only way around that was to get him used to it in increments. It was good for him, Jarlaxle reasoned as he pressed against Entreri’s warm, solid body and thought about how this would feel skin to skin.

That Jarlaxle hadn’t lost his ring at all but had simply slipped it into his pocket was no matter, and neither was the fact the bracelet Kimmuriel had gifted him protected him from all elements, cold included.

Entreri expected Jarlaxle to fill the silence, but the drow seemed content to just sit there next to him, even going so far as to rest his cheek on Entreri’s shoulder. Artemis Entreri had been many things in his lifetime, but a pillow was not one of them, and his body was sending him mixed signals, telling him Jarlaxle was a threat, that he needed to defend himself, even as it couldn’t help reacting to the proximity of an attractive body.

And Entreri supposed he had to stop denying that he found Jarlaxle attractive, whether it was the fault of the flute or not, despite being male, despite being… _Jarlaxle_. It wasn’t something he could will away, much as he tried, and it could distract him at an unfortunate moment if he didn’t find a way to deal with it, which, in his mind, left him with two options: leave, or keep ignoring it and hope it goes away.

With his arm around Jarlaxle’s deceptively delicate shoulders, neither option appealed, though he didn’t consider the third option an option at all.

Entreri wished Jarlaxle would say something. He never was very good at sitting in his own thoughts.

The campfire cast jagged shadows against the cave walls and Brien’s form, flickering enough that Entreri almost didn’t catch the mage shifting underneath it, but the distraction was a relief.

“The slumbering princess awakens,” he drawled.

“Ah! So he does.” Jarlaxle pulled his cloak tighter around him when Artemis pulled away, feeling the cold even with his magical protection.

Entreri paused halfway to standing up as though trying to decide between two actions. Then he tugged off his gauntlet, reaching into its pocket to pull out a blanket, taking the time to drape it around Jarlaxle’s shoulders before bolting to Brien’s side of the fire, all business, as though if he did the action quickly enough Jarlaxle would not notice.

Jarlaxle watched him with a small smile and no small amusement, curling his fingers into the blanket, warmed by more than the drape of fabric over his shoulders.

“My thanks, _abbil_ ,” he said with some affection, which Artemis promptly ignored.

“Awake?” Entreri barked at their captive. A light kick in the ribs elicited a groan that was answer enough. “Good.” Entreri squatted over him, picking up the mage by the coat and pulling him up to sit back against the wall. Brien glared at him impotently over his gag but shriveled under Entreri’s stare. “Now, you are going to answer some questions. If you try anything when I take off your gag, I will punch your teeth down your throat.”

“Now, _abbil_ ,” said Jarlaxle as he scooted closer, taking on his expected role. “There is no need for such threats. Our questions are simple, and I am certain our young friend here will be accommodating. Isn’t that right, Brien? It is Brien, isn’t it?”

Brien watched Jarlaxle with a sidelong look, clearly as nonplussed by the drow as everyone else who met him.

“Why don’t you give us a nod to show you understand?” Jarlaxle suggested, sounding perfectly amicable. “I am sure that will go a long way to easing my friend’s temper.”

Brien’s stare darted back and forth between them until eventually, hesitantly, he nodded.

Entreri yanked out the gag none too gently.

Brien groaned, flexing his jaw, hands tugging at his bonds as though forgetting they were there. “Where is Lorica?”

“Nowhere she can help you,” Entreri said. “And you’re not the one asking the questions in this arrangement.”

Jarlaxle laid a hand on Entreri’s shoulder. “And how do you know Lorica, Brien?”

“Why does that matter?”

“We are just trying to understand,” Jarlaxle went on patiently, “why a pair of resourceful individuals such as yourself would spend your time razing villages and incurring the wrath of King Gareth?”

“It’s not about the villages,” Brien grated out.

Entreri noticed he didn’t say the same for King Gareth. “Then what is it about?”

Brien’s jaw worked, as though he were chewing his words over before he said them. “I owe her my life. I am trying to stop her from throwing away hers.”

“Throwing it away?” Jarlaxle prompted, leaning forward.

Brien looked hesitantly back and forth between them, but he was no warrior, and all three knew he would break with little pressure. His shoulders sagged, and Jarlaxle got a sense of just how young he was, barely an adult despite brown eyes that seemed far older.

“She was a slave years ago, before I knew her, which… to go by your faces I’m sure you’ve guessed. She worked at an iron mine not far from here. Deplorable conditions. Slaves were getting sick around her left and right, two were killed in a tunnel collapse. Four more died under mysterious circumstances.”

“Let me guess,” Entreri muttered. “They found something that wasn’t iron.”

Brien nodded jerkily. “There was an ancient temple buried under there too. Or the remains of one. The idol, it… I’m not sure where it was, but Lorica was the first to touch it.”

Jarlaxle sat back, brow smoothing over in understanding. “And so she took the curse upon herself.”

Brien nodded again, swallowing visibly. “It blessed her with the strength of a giant but cursed her with… an untamable rage. Or maybe it just… just made the rage she was already feeling worse. I don’t know.”

“She killed her masters,” Entreri said. A statement, not a question.

“She… yes. Viciously. She fled, and… the next time she saw the idol was in that shop.”

Jarlaxle hummed in consideration, mulling all of this over before prompting, “And you? Where do you come into this?”

Brien shifted, flexing his wrists against his bonds. “My father was a wand-maker. I was apprenticed to him until he put himself so deep in gambling debt that he traded me to save his life.” His lips twisted in an angry smile, and Entreri knew what that expression felt like from the other side. “Long story short, years later, she… happened to pass by while my master was beating me and flew into a rage. Killed him, made us both fugitives. I can’t say I feel bad about that.”

“Of course not,” Jarlaxle agreed distractedly, chin in his hand. That explained the proliferation of lightning wands. The one Jarlaxle had nicked from him was not the most finely made, but it was efficient, and if he was making all these himself, the boy had talent. Jarlaxle did so hate to see talent wasted.

Brien paused, then, in a hushed voice, added, “Lorica says she hears Talos speaking to her.”

At Entreri’s derisive snort, Brien shot him a glare.

“You see the power she wields. You think she could do that without the blessing of her god?”

“And what is Talos telling her to do?” Jarlaxle asked, cutting off whatever sneering commentary Entreri had been about to make.

“To tear it all down.”

 

“So she’s crazy,” Entreri muttered, reconvening with Jarlaxle just outside the cave, not truly caring if Brien overheard.

“Potentially.” Under the blanket, Jarlaxle rubbed his knuckles together, his breath misting in front of his face. His shoulders hunched up towards his ears, and Entreri wondered if Jarlaxle regretted having no hair on days like this, marveling that he didn’t see goosebumps appear on Jarlaxle’s bare skin. Perhaps drow skin worked differently. “Whether driven by Talos or not, her anger is undirected but at least in part political, to stay so purposely in Heliogabalus’ sight.”

“Her anger is directed,” Entreri replied with a shake of his head, “just broadly.”

Jarlaxle hummed as he considered that. “Angry at society? I cannot say I blame her.”

Entreri watched the profile of Jarlaxle’s face, frowning when he found the eyepatch turned towards him, suspecting he did that on purpose. He wondered if that was what Jarlaxle would have liked to do in Menzberranzan: tear it all down.

Jarlaxle shivered and, hesitantly, after agonizing internal debate, Entreri wrapped his arm and cloak around him again. Jarlaxle’s ears twitched, and he looked up at Entreri in surprise even as he pressed against him gratefully.

“Why are we in these godsforsaken lands?” Entreri groused, finding Jarlaxle’s weight against him less threatening when they were standing, where he could dart away and draw his sword at a moment’s notice.

Jarlaxle let out an amused huff, turning towards Entreri to warm his nose against a fold in his cloak, and that made Entreri’s skin feel hot and tight again, noting how close Jarlaxle’s face was to his throat. The hat flopped against Entreri’s cheek. “For a change of scenery?”

Entreri grunted. “Ah yes, the varying shades of gray are most inspiring.” He found himself missing the desert with an almost tangible ache, but then it was easy to miss the heat and merciless sun in the bleak cold.

“Still more colorful than your wardrobe.”

“Not all of us can be peacocks.”

Entreri tried to catch a glimpse of Jarlaxle’s face out of the corner of his eye, found Jarlaxle’s uncovered eye peeking up at him with amusement and with a softness Entreri refused to acknowledge.

He cleared his throat. “So how do we plan to catch the witch, then?”

Jarlaxle hummed, turning to look out at the horizon. No fires dotted the landscape. No storms cast looming shadows. “She has gone into hiding, it seems. She is low on resources, and, despite her actions, I do not believe she is quite as suicidal as Brien says.”

Entreri sighed. “So she will not make it easy, in other words.”

“When is easy ever fun?”

Entreri gave Jarlaxle a droll look. “You tell me. You are fairly easy, and you seem to enjoy it.”

Jarlaxle blinked at him before he started to chortle, pressing his face back into Entreri’s cloak and the crook of his neck, the brim of his hat flopping against his nose this time.

“This damn thing,” Entreri grumbled, trying to twist his head out from under the hat, even as he felt a flush rise up his neck from the contact.

Jarlaxle finally pulled away, his grin mischievous as he slipped out from under Entreri’s arm and backed towards the cave. Entreri was almost relieved, even as the air felt cold where Jarlaxle had been standing a moment before. “Oh, I don’t know, _abbil_. ‘Hard’ is quite a bit of fun as well.”

The once-over and the wink Jarlaxle gave him had Entreri flustered.

Did he just…? No.

But before Entreri could scrape together an intelligent response, Jarlaxle had slipped back into the cave as though he’d said nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artemis is slowly starting to get a clue. Someone give the man a cookie.
> 
> So I'm thinking Tuesday and Friday updates? Sound good?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday! Consider this an early Valentine's Day present...

Marsk was a thick man with upturned eyebrows that made him look perpetually worried. Today, looking over the pair of horses Jarlaxle and Entreri were returning, those brows drew together in a look that was confused as well as worried.

“I thought you said you’d lost this one?” he said, taking the reins of the brown horse Entreri was leading, the horse that Entreri had left behind at the river and that Brien had used to replace his.

“We did. But we found it.”

Marsk licked his cracked lips, looking past Entreri to the gaudily dressed drow and the horse he was leading. “Then you should be bringing back three horses.”

“I fear we have lost the other one,” Jarlaxle said cheerfully. There hadn’t been time to fetch his horse from Gusev’s stables in all the mayhem. “So if you could please apply the fee we incurred for losing that horse—” he pointed at the horse Entreri had been leading “—and apply it to the one we lost this time, we would be most grateful.”

“Um.” Marsk scratched his head. “Sure, I s’pose.”

“And if you could hold these two for us,” Jarlaxle went on. “We will likely be venturing out in another day or so.”

Marsk just blinked at him. “You…? Again? And what configuration, pray tell, will you be bringing back this time?”

“Well, if I told you, that’d ruin all the fun of the surprise!”

Entreri cleared his throat. “I would like to point out that I have brought back both horses I have rented. This delinquent, on the other hand…” He indicated Jarlaxle with a point of his thumb.

“‘Delinquent’?” Jarlaxle protested, clapping a hand to his chest as though wounded.

“What else should I call you? What do you call the opposite of a horse-thief?”

“An idiot?” Marsk suggested.

Entreri bowed to Marsk. “An idiot it is. So if the idiot could please pay the man…?”

“Oh, he will!” Jarlaxle said sweetly, handing over the reins and sweeping right out the door, leaving Entreri holding the bill.

He looked at Marsk, Marsk raised his upturned eyebrows, and Entreri reached into his pouch. “Dammit.”

Entreri scowled when he found Jarlaxle waiting for him in the street, but Jarlaxle just smiled all the wider. Entreri would insist that prickling under his skin was irritation.

“You’ll be paying for that later,” Entreri assured him, walking past him for the tavern. It had been a long, cold ride back, with quite a bit more standing around outside the gate than he would have liked. Brien had looked dead-eyed and resigned when they’d handed him over, but Entreri doubted they would execute him before they brought in Lorica. Either way, a hot meal would be appreciated.

“Of course, _abbil_ ,” Jarlaxle said indulgently, walking in stride with him and going so far as to slip an arm through his.

Entreri’s steps stuttered but didn’t stop as he looked first at the arm curled through his, then up at the drow currently attached to it. Again he was given the side with the eyepatch.

“I should like, however, to look into a different means of conveyance,” Jarlaxle said. “Something a bit more practical.”

“Something magical, I’m assuming?” Entreri asked with an arched eyebrow, wondering why he wasn’t pulling his arm away.

“Well, it’s either that, or I could ride you.”

Entreri’s steps did stutter to a stop then. “Ex… excuse me?”

“You know,” Jarlaxle said much too innocently, “what do they call it? Piggyback? I hold onto your shoulders, and you run?”

Entreri was still being assaulted with images of a different kind of riding, and heat washed over his face.

“Why?” Jarlaxle asked, smile bright as he leaned into Entreri, shoulder to shoulder, too damnably close. “What did you think I meant?”

“Why are you touching me?” Entreri shot back.

“Why are you letting me?”

They stared at each other for a long moment, unblinking, Jarlaxle’s smirk creeping dangerously higher, until Entreri tore himself away with a hiss and a glare that promised death if Jarlaxle pressed too close again. Jarlaxle just bit his lip against a grin, letting Entreri stalk a few steps ahead of him before following.

 

Days passed with no sign of trouble and no sign of Lorica. Jarlaxle was as insufferable as always—more insufferable… maybe… possibly—but he was determined to see both his quests through. That Entreri was, so far, only aware of the one quest was, perhaps, part of the problem.

“You bring me to a frozen wasteland,” Entreri groused, picking his way through what had once been the ceiling of the condemned building, “and now you bring me here.”

Before the building had collapsed, there had been rumors of squatters here, in this rundown district of Heliogabalus, and some of those rumors painted those squatters as Talossans.

“We know Lorica and Brien passed through here,” Jarlaxle reminded him, “despite being fugitives. They had to stay somewhere. Why not among their brethren?”

Entreri’s answering grunt was unimpressed. They picked their way through to the part of the building still standing, a corner of stalwart masonry with an overhang that had once been the second floor. Jarlaxle climbed up, light on his feet, testing the floor before gesturing for Entreri to follow, and Entreri had to huff at the image he made, the uncollapsed piece of building like a stage and the backdrop of a play starring Jarlaxle.

When he climbed up, Entreri found Jarlaxle again distracted by the compact mirror in his hand. Entreri kept catching Jarlaxle fiddling with the thing, and either there was some sort of magic property to it Entreri was not privy to, or Jarlaxle was even vainer than he had realized.

“I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Entreri muttered as he pushed past the drow, taking in the mess in the shadowed corner, the overturned bits of wood that had once been furniture. A two-legged desk was the closest thing to whole, forming two sides of a triangle, like a piece of flotsam lost at sea.

“Anything at all,” Jarlaxle said, kicking aside a rotting bit of bookcase to find swollen, moldy books underneath, “unless you have a better lead.”

A grand window remained as part of Jarlaxle’s “backdrop”, letting in a stream of light, dust motes painting him a uniform shade. His purple hat, rainbow cloak, red eyes, and even obsidian skin were muted under a sunlit brown, and without the distraction of clashing colors, Entreri could better make out his shape in profile, the expressive eyes over the high cut of his cheekbones, the graceful figure under his pageantry.

Entreri wasn’t much of an appreciator of beauty, but there was something balanced and pleasing about the overall effect that made it difficult to look away.

A troubled expression crossed Jarlaxle’s face as he slipped the compact mirror back into his pocket. He turned to Artemis with an inscrutable look, the diatryma feather in his hatband flopping as he tilted his head.

“Something on your mind, _abbil_?”

It was like Jarlaxle had reached through his chest and squeezed his lungs, being the object of that sunlit stare.

“I was thinking about how much I wish Ilnezhara had burned that damned thing,” Entreri answered curtly, flicking a look at Jarlaxle’s hat before turning back to the room—if it could be called a room—at large.

Jarlaxle looked up at the brim of his hat, a small smile curling his lips. “It offends you that much, does it?”

“It does.” Entreri rummaged through the sideways desk, more to look busy than in the hopes of finding anything. Still, his spine prickled when he felt Jarlaxle approach, and he knew the drow was up to mischief before the hat even fell on his head, a drow hand holding it in place. Entreri tensed, noting the purple brim at the edge of his vision.

“Hmm.” Jarlaxle stepped back, giving him an appraising look and tapping his chin. Out of the light, he was all loud colors again, though the proportions seemed off without the hat. “Purple really is more my color, but the shape is not terrible.”

Entreri glared at Jarlaxle, setting down the papers in his hand. “I am certain my dagger could change its shape.”

“Now, now, Artemis, don’t scowl. One simply cannot with a hat that cheerful.”

“And yet, somehow I manage.” He finally yanked the hat off his head, his free hand smoothing down his hair.

Jarlaxle tutted, wisely snatching back the hat before Entreri could make good on his threat. “Honestly, Artemis, would a _little_ color kill you?”

“It might. Best not to try.”

Jarlaxle gave him a droll look. “One color.”

“The blood of my enemies.”

Jarlaxle laughed, and even here in the shadows, Entreri couldn’t look away. “I meant for your outfit, _abbil_.”

“So did I.”

Jarlaxle shook his head in exasperation, though the amusement there was unmistakable. Still, he stared at Entreri long after his smile had started to fade, that troubled look creasing his brow again. He opened his mouth as though to say something, only to close it again with a self-deprecating smile.

“Perhaps you are right. I doubt we will find anything of use.”

Entreri threw up his hands in exasperation. “Then why did you bring me here?”

“I did not expect this building to be in such poor shape,” Jarlaxle admitted, peering up at the overhang like he expected it to fall at any moment. He shrugged. “Besides, it was something to do while we wait.”

“…wait for what?”

But the damnable drow didn’t answer as he swept off the “stage”.

 

It was only when Ilnezhara traced a finger along his furrowed brow that Jarlaxle realized he was frowning.

“You are preoccupied tonight,” she said, pressing her naked form up the length of his, both still sweaty from exertion, and Jarlaxle was puzzled to see she looked amused rather than offended. “Is our assassin proving a difficult quarry?”

Even in the dark, her eyes glittered, and Jarlaxle felt caught.

“He is often difficult in many senses,” he sighed. “But, I think it might be best if I give up the chase.”

Now Ilnezhara was the one frowning, and she sat up on her elbows to give him a measuring look.

“He is… not a forgiving man. One misstep, and I will have lost what we’ve built.”

“You have not ‘misstepped’ with him, before?”

“Not in this.”

As Ilnezhara watched, the crease in her brow growing deeper, Jarlaxle pulled away from her to reach for something—his vest—and to pull out a familiar mirror from an invisible pocket. He pressed it back into her hand, and she considered him with a sidelong look.

“My deepest thanks for the loan,” he said, the smile he plastered on convincing to anyone who didn’t know him.

“You did not like what you saw?” she hedged, setting the mirror down on the bedside table.

At the condemned house, Jarlaxle had finally caught a glimpse of what the sisters already knew. Artemis had been staring at him, as they had suggested he did, but it wasn’t with the raw desire he had expected or was used to from barmaids or drow priestesses. There had been something softer, almost aching, in his look, and it made Jarlaxle’s breath stick in his throat.

This wasn’t lust. Lust Jarlaxle could deal with, and with aplomb. This was… Jarlaxle wasn’t sure what this was.

“I do not know,” he murmured.

“Well,” said Ilnezhara as he laid back down. “If you give up now, I will owe my sister more gold than I care to part with. Let me give you something else.”

She rose gracefully from the bed, and Jarlaxle admired the way the lamplight highlighted her curves, cutting out her pale shape from the darkness. She returned with something reflective in her hand, about the same size as the compact.

“What’s this?” Jarlaxle asked, blinking down at the bauble as she pressed it into his hand.

“A regular mirror,” Ilnezhara drawled, “so that you might see your own face when _you_ look at _him_.”

Jarlaxle turned the mirror over in his hands, a startled look staring back at him from one uncovered, tired eye. When Ilnezhara threw his pants at him, he knew he was being dismissed.

“Go. Crawl into your human’s bed next time. And invite me once you’ve both figured out what you want.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh. Important chapter, guys. _nervous laughter_

In hindsight, Entreri should have expected the explosion.

“Mages,” he grumbled, watching the plume of smoke rise into the air from the prison, a gaping, acid-chewed hole where a barred window had been. “Did she break him out, do you suppose?”

“Oh no,” Jarlaxle said brightly, standing next to him and watching the smoke too. “I doubt she’s been in the city.”

Entreri favored Jarlaxle with a sidelong look. “He was gagged and searched before they put him away. Was he hiding a wand in an unmentionable place?”

“Don’t be silly. I gave it to him.”

Entreri gave him a long, slow blink. “You… gave it to him.”

Jarlaxle flashed him a brilliant smile. “Why not? It’s not like he knew it was me. We were already paid for the delivery, and now he will lead us to Lorica.” At Entreri’s dubious look, he cocked his head and said. “Did you really think all I gave him was a wand? Kimmuriel sees what he sees now. Finding him—finding _them_ —will be no trouble at all.”

“And now we get to collect the bounty on him twice.”

Jarlaxle grinned. “And now you’re thinking like me, _abbil_.”

 

The outline of the dimensional door shimmered, a window into what Kimmuriel assured him was Lorica and Brien’s current campsite.

“It looks like it’s… underground?” Entreri squinted into the dark, having trouble adjusting to his darkvision while he was still standing outside in the sunlit snow.

Even without changing expression, Kimmuriel gave him the sense that he thought Entreri was an idiot. Entreri was beginning to suspect that was just his face. “A mine, specifically. An abandoned one.”

“An iron mine, no doubt,” Jarlaxle mused. “What brings them back there, I wonder?”

“A change of scenery?” Entreri drawled, startling a laugh out of Jarlaxle.

Kimmuriel just blinked boredly at them both, squinting against the glare.

“It is not far,” Entreri added with a shrug, “it is abandoned, and it is shelter. No one would look for them there.”

“Except us,” Jarlaxle said slyly.

“Except us.”

With an agitated wave of his hand, Kimmuriel motioned them through. They would be able to save the horses after all, which was fortunate, considering how much Marsk had raised the price on them.

“They are away, you said?” Jarlaxle verified before stepping over.

“Ice-fishing for food,” Kimmuriel answered. “They will be gone for hours, at least.”

Jarlaxle nodded, pleased, and swept through the portal into the mine. Kimmuriel eyed Entreri with a narrowed look.

“If you even try to throw that snowball behind your back, I will send you to the ocean instead.”

Straight-faced, Entreri dropped the snowball and sauntered over to the portal. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kimmuriel was so focused on eyeing Entreri that he missed the snowball coming from Jarlaxle through the portal. Entreri had the perfect view of Kimmuriel’s face when it hit, eyes wide as he squawked, before Jarlaxle grabbed Entreri by the coat and hauled him through the portal, pulling him through just before it snapped closed.

They stumbled with the momentum, Jarlaxle’s hands still in his coat as his body shook with laughter, pressing his face to Entreri’s shoulder.

“I suspect we will have to walk back,” Entreri pointed out through a smirk. He realized belatedly that he had wrapped an arm around Jarlaxle to steady him and hadn’t let go.

“Worth it,” Jarlaxle decided, wiping his uncovered eye. He looked up at Artemis, his face startlingly close, and smiled.

“I…” Entreri couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t let him go yet.

But Jarlaxle figured it out before he did, the heat of Entreri’s body and the closeness of his lips tempting. Artemis started to pull away, and Jarlaxle almost let him, remembering the look on his face in the ruins, remembering his talk with Ilnezhara, only to decide that he’d about had enough of this foolishness, tangling a hand in Artemis’ hair and pulling him into a kiss.

Artemis’ senses shorted out, certain this had to be Kimmuriel playing a trick on his mind, but his body reacted before the rest of him could, pulling Jarlaxle against him as he returned the kiss, a brush of lips turning into teeth and tongue, the Damaran cold sharpened against the heat of his body. He couldn’t think, barely registered the way Jarlaxle pressed him back until his back hit the wall, and finally Artemis understood what men meant when they spoke of heat, when they spoke of _want_.

Then his brain caught up and Artemis tore his lips away and pushed Jarlaxle back to arms’ length, breathing heavy as he looked at Jarlaxle with dark eyes. As much as he almost trusted the drow, his hackles were up. “What is this?”

Jarlaxle’s brows twitched together in confusion. He licked his lip where Entreri had bitten him a moment before. “Some would call it a kiss.”

But Entreri was an exposed nerve and just found the flippant response grating. “You have a godsdamn motivation for everything, Jarlaxle. I repeat: what is this?”

“And _I_ repeat: it is a kiss,” Jarlaxle said, voice taking on an edge as he shoved off Entreri’s hands and stepped back. “I did not think it would so offend you.”

Even when Jarlaxle put some space between them, Entreri had trouble ordering his thoughts. He could feel his pulse in his ears.

“ _Did_ it… offend you?” Jarlaxle asked, unable to make sense of the look on Entreri’s face, wondered if he had misread the situation, if Ilnezhara had just been moving them around the chessboard at her whim. But Entreri had kissed back, and with an enthusiasm Jarlaxle had found… inspiring.

Entreri heard the hesitancy in Jarlaxle’s voice, looked up to find a guarded sort of nervousness in his uncovered eye. He wanted to believe it was genuine, but there was nothing genuine about the drow in front of him.

“Do you honestly think this is the time or place for this?” Entreri hissed, a sweep of his arm indicating the mining tunnel they were standing in, the alcove where Brien and Lorica had set up bedrolls and blankets in a makeshift camp. Jarlaxle's uncovered eye gleamed red in his darkvision.

“Kimmuriel just said they would be gone for hours. And that is not an answer.”

“It is answer enough!” Entreri snapped.

Jarlaxle frowned, realizing he had gone about this wrong. This wasn’t Entreri's usual churlishness but instead the defensive snarling of a trapped animal. Jarlaxle wasn’t sure what was setting Entreri off—the location? the dark? …him?—but he needed to tread carefully.

“All right, _abbil_ ,” he said, hands palm out in a placating gesture. Entreri was still tense as a bowstring. Tenser, even. “We will… set this aside for now and discuss it after we have settled matters here. Yes?”

“There's nothing to discuss.” Entreri gave him a wide berth, circling around him to investigate the camp.

Jarlaxle took that as well as a kick in the teeth. “There certainly is, when you kiss back with that much tongue.”

“Excuse me?” Entreri growled, his glare daring Jarlaxle to continue even as Jarlaxle watched all the heat rush to his face.

“Do you need me to repeat myself?” Jarlaxle asked, unflinching. “Teeth too, by the way. I did not think you would be so feisty.”

Entreri stalked towards him, hands curling either into fists or with the desire to strangle him. Potentially both.

“That is not a complaint, by the way,” Jarlaxle said breezily, even as he palmed a dagger just in case. “Quite the opposite. I like feisty.”

“Well, I'm about to get extra feisty with my dagger in your throat,” Entreri growled.

“At least buy me dinner, first.”

_This isn't exactly treading carefully_ , a voice in the back of Jarlaxle's head reminded him, but there was something so irresistible about needling Entreri, particularly when it made him flush like that.

“Gods’ sake, Artemis,” Jarlaxle sighed. “I find you attractive, you find me attractive—the math is simple enough. Why must there be an ulterior motive?”

Again Jarlaxle found himself envying Kimmuriel, but even with his magic eyepatch, he couldn’t see past the shuttered look on Artemis’ face. Jarlaxle couldn’t tell if the man were torturing him with the silence or if he genuinely did not have an answer.

Artemis had a death-grip on his dagger. Or… no, a death-grip on the flute, Jarlaxle realized, and Jarlaxle knew him at least well enough to see he was struggling with something.

“Later,” Jarlaxle suggested again, and this time Artemis offered a reluctant, jerky nod.

Which, naturally, left them a couple hours’ worth of painfully awkward silence, silence Jarlaxle suggested they fill by scouting the area, an idea Entreri took to with a little too much relief, offering to scout one way along the tunnel while Jarlaxle scouted the other.

 

Entreri appreciated the silence and solitude, a weight leaving his chest when Jarlaxle left his sight, but the oppressive darkness was too much like the Underdark for his liking. He tried to focus on the task at hand, noting the curve of the track, pausing to examine a tripwire that ran between two pillars, rigged to collapse this part of the tunnels. It was fairly new, attached to a ceramic bottle of oil of impact to go by the smell.

Looking up, he could see the thin threads of more tripwires down the path. Someone had wanted to bury this place. Had Lorica and Brien set these?

As he knelt, taking his time to undo the first trap, stowing the bottle inside his gauntlet’s pocket, Entreri couldn’t stop his mind from wandering.

Jarlaxle had…

_They_ had…

Entreri had thought of running, had thought of ignoring his attraction, but not once had he thought of acting on it.

There Jarlaxle went, screwing everything up. The timing was suspicious, and Entreri had no doubt that Ilnezhara had said something to him. He gritted his teeth at the thought of them discussing him, mocking him, behind his back.

They were business partners. To say this was unprofessional was… was…

His hand brushed over the flute.

But Jarlaxle had pressed against him like he was made to fit there, and Entreri couldn’t help playing through the rest of that scene in his mind, wondering what would—what _could_ —have happened if he hadn’t pushed Jarlaxle away. He could picture Jarlaxle’s bare body easily, could imagine the heat of his skin against his, could hear the hitch in his breath as they slotted together and—

And that’s where Entreri’s imaginings twisted sideways into memories he didn’t want to associate with Jarlaxle. He jerked himself out of it as he almost flubbed fixing the tripwire, cursing under his breath as he finished. He was only then aware of his Problem.

He glared down at his crotch. “Dammit.”

There was nothing for it. He was going to have to leave, either by faking his own death or not faking Jarlaxle’s. Maybe run off somewhere south, where the locals had never heard of snow.

There was the lightning-strike smell of magic, sharp in the closed space, and Entreri froze. The sound of flint hitting steel was loud in the silence, and Entreri melted back into the shadows just as the spill of torchlight would have hit him.

“Godsdamn,” muttered Brien as Entreri watched him struggling to balance a torch and write in a pad at the same time. “Still too far south…”

Entreri didn’t see Lorica and assumed Brien had to have teleported here on his own. Brien turned to go back the way Entreri had come, back towards the camp, and he didn’t even know he had a shadow until a cloak fell over his torch, snuffing it out.

 

“Really, Jarlaxle, well done,” Jarlaxle muttered to himself, taking off his hat to scratch his bald scalp.

He had not been expecting that reaction. He’d entertained the possibility of being rebuffed, certainly, but he had envisioned that as involving more of a fist to the face and less tongue. Something decisive.

Artemis’ reaction was… not decisive.

But, a mine was certainly not the best place for a tryst. Perhaps a more relaxed and romantic setting would have…?

Jarlaxle had to chuckle at himself. He could well picture Entreri’s face at the first hint of something “romantic” and doubted that would have ended any better. Candlelight? A nice dinner? Artemis would have been on-edge immediately.

Still… there had been _something_ , and Jarlaxle had faith in his abilities to keep this from turning into a complete disaster.

Yet he couldn’t disentangle the sour knot in his stomach at the thought of this going badly. Entreri was not a forgiving man, and one more misstep could send him packing. If he wasn’t already packing.

Jarlaxle glanced back over his shoulder, but the man was far out of sight. “Well done,” he muttered again.

Following the bend brought Jarlaxle out into the palest wisps of sunlight and into the surprised stare of a snow-dusted Lorica, a brace of fish slung over her shoulder.

“Well done, indeed,” Jarlaxle managed as he backpedaled, throwing daggers end over end. But she had already drawn her mace and enacted its protection.

And fish, it turned out, were not the worst offhand weapons.

 

Entreri hated mages. This one was more slippery than he had expected, running with more alacrity through the tunnels than a blind person should be able to, and it was only as he gave chase that Entreri realized that he must have some sort of magical darkvision too.

“Perfect,” he muttered through his teeth. He cursed Jarlaxle for helping the fool escape then, catching more magic missiles in his gauntlet and rolling under a fan of fire. His shoulder caught on the metal edge of the track, but he kept moving through a wince.

They sprinted past the camp alcove just in time to pass Jarlaxle and Lorica running the other way. Entreri threw out his hands in a question, while Jarlaxle shrugged his shoulders in an unhelpful answer.

_Hurry up with the mage_ , he signed between dagger throws, his hands a blur. He disappeared around the corner just as Entreri barked out a laugh, Lorica running past him, ignoring him in pursuit of the drow.

“Wait—!” Entreri called out, wanting to warn him of the sea of traps he’d only started to undo, when magic washed over him in a cold embrace, freezing his body where he stood.

_Hold person_ would only last seconds, and Brien did the wise thing: he kept on running.

 

Jarlaxle saw the tripwire— _tripwires_ —and skidded to a stop, spinning to face Lorica with a brilliant smile, a wand in each hand.

“My dear, we really do need to stop meeting like this,” he said as though she didn’t have him cornered.

“With you hunting me down like a dog?” Lorica growled. Lightning crackled over her mace head. “Agreed.”

She brought down her mace in a heavy swing, only to cleave through an illusion. Before Jarlaxle could speak or retaliate, however, her offhand came up in a second strike, hitting the actual Jarlaxle in the face… with her brace of fish.

More startled than hurt, Jarlaxle just barely managed to sidestep her lunge, wincing as she crashed into the wall and brought dirt and rock raining down on them both. A wave of his right wand, and she found her fish-wielding hand caught in goop, stuck to the wall.

“Why did you come back here?” he asked as he started to edge past her. “Was it just convenience, or were you looking for something?”

But Lorica clearly wasn’t in the mood for talking, tearing her arm free with superhuman strength and swinging her mace, not for Jarlaxle, he realized too late, but for the tripwire he’d been careful not to set off.

 

_A few seconds_ seemed like an eternity when Entreri felt the ground shake and heard the rumble of an avalanche.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _He glared down at his crotch. “Dammit.”_ is the alternate summary for this fic.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, everyone! That cliffhanger was fun, wasn't it?

Jarlaxle couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard he coughed, he couldn’t seem to expel the wetness from his lungs, his battered body protesting against each breath. He had never quite realized just how many muscles it took just to breathe.

Kimmuriel’s shield and his protection from fire had protected him from the explosion itself but had left him vulnerable to the avalanche.

He couldn’t feel his fingers, but he could see them, could see the plume of his hat just inches away. He reached, and that took an inordinate amount of strength too, and he imagined he felt his fingertips brush the edge of the brim.

A pair of heavy boots filled Jarlaxle’s vision.

_Breathe_.

“You are difficult to kill, pretty drow,” said Lorica, crouching so that he could see her grin in his limited field of vision. She had crawled out of the dust like a creature of the earth, unharmed, and now she waved her mace in front of his face. “But I don’t think I will miss this time.”

Everything was going gray around the edges, the pressure on his chest seeming to double in weight.

_Breathe_.

She raised her mace.

 

And Artemis Entreri barreled into her with a guttural roar. It felt like his shoulder collided with stone, but he didn’t care.

“If anyone gets to kill this idiot, it’s me!”

The impact sent more dust and rock falling, but Entreri was single-minded in his focus, doing more harm to himself than to her as he continually body-checked her into the wall, his dagger glancing off stone-like skin. She elbowed him in the face, splitting his lip, but he just gritted his teeth and came back.

“More stubborn than a mule,” Lorica grated out as they both grappled for her mace. She planted her foot against his stomach and _shoved_ , sending him stumbling back into the opposite wall.

Entreri grunted and spat blood but just glared at her and drew his sword.

She shook her head. “Honestly.”

Entreri waded in. Without her magical protection, Lorica would have been dead ten times over, bleeding from a dozen wounds, but she just shoved him back again as though he were a toy. This time she came at him, swinging her mace, and Entreri brought up his sword as though to block… only to let it drop, catching the mace in his gauntleted fist.

When he swung his dagger around in a counter-strike, it drew blood, a stab between her ribs that her instinctive twisting turned into a glancing blow.

Lorica wrenched her mace free and jumped back, eyes wide, and Entreri grinned at her through bloody teeth, flexing his fingers. He could have gotten her then, he knew, but at some point his priorities had changed. The bounty on her head wasn’t worth losing Jarlaxle.

“Leave,” he growled.

She didn’t need to be told twice, scrambling out of the tunnel as quickly as she dared, eyes never leaving his until she was around the corner.

Entreri turned to Jarlaxle, the sight of him coughing blood into the dirt like ice water against his rage. “Oh, you idiot,” he breathed, sheathing his dagger as he dropped to kneel beside him. The drow was half crushed by the rocks, and shifting them wrong could bring down a second avalanche, one that could bury him too.

Then again, the ceiling was unstable—it might well bury him anyway. Entreri’s survival instinct told him to leave him, but some other instinct had him picking up Jarlaxle’s hat and reaching in for a healing potion. If he was going to start shifting rocks, he’d need to make sure Jarlaxle survived long enough.

The angle was awkward, and Jarlaxle coughed up almost as much as he drank down.

“Drink, dammit,” Entreri hissed, feeling like he was the one who couldn’t breathe.

One jewel-red eye blinked up at him after a few sips. There was an attempt at words, followed by more wheezing and the spray of blood, and then Artemis caught Jarlaxle’s free hand moving shakily in drow sign language.

It took a few passes for Entreri to make sense of it, the way his fingers trembled. “‘Hat’?”

Jarlaxle gave him a relieved blink that Entreri took to mean _yes_ and then pointed at his head.

“I really don’t think now’s the time to be worrying about accessorizing,” Entreri snapped. His desperation looked much like anger.

Jarlaxle just pointed again.

Shaking his head, Entreri placed the hat on his head and watched as Jarlaxle reached up weakly to tug at the brim. His form wavered, and he shifted, flattening against the stone before seeming to melt through it.

Entreri had seen this trick before, and he laughed weakly, grabbing Jarlaxle by the hand when he reached out, tugging him free of the stone where he became flesh and blood again. He immediately slumped in Entreri’s arms, trembling and coughing up more blood, and Entreri didn’t need to look to know that his body was still badly crushed.

“Don’t die on me.”

Artemis poured more potions down his throat, propping him up with an arm around his waist. Once Jarlaxle’s breathing leveled out without that rattling gasp, Entreri reached back into the hat to pull out his healing orb. It took him a few tries to remember the correct words to chant, and Jarlaxle mouthed a few corrections each time he got it wrong.

Slowly, Jarlaxle’s body mended, bones reforming and snapping back into place, skin and muscle knitting back together. His head rested on Artemis’ shoulder, and Artemis could feel every shudder, every spasm of pain as Jarlaxle’s wounds righted themselves. He barely noticed that he was murmuring words of assurance in Jarlaxle’s ear between chants— _It’s all right… I’ve got you_ —and barely noticed the bone-crushing grip Jarlaxle had on his wrist.

Entreri kept chanting until a dark hand touched his.

“Thank you, _abbil_.” The words slurred together breathlessly before Jarlaxle slumped against him completely in a dead faint.

Entreri just breathed, checking his pulse and assuring himself that he would be okay.

 

Jarlaxle woke to the smell of a campfire and the sound of air moving through a flute. He was curled on a bedroll that smelled like someone else under the pervasive stink of smoke and old blood, blankets and furs a comforting weight, and past the glow of the fire, he could see his companion in profile, the dancing light deepening the shadows along his brow, under his eyes.

Entreri had carried him back here, to the little alcove Lorica and Brien had been camping in, hedging his—their—bets that the fugitive pair wouldn’t return. Jarlaxle took stock of himself: his body was whole but drained. Not even the healing orb could replace lost blood, he found, and he’d lost more than he’d cared to, pinned under all that stone.

Better his blood than his life, he supposed, and that was the first time in a long time that Jarlaxle had genuinely believed he was going to die. Considering Artemis’ earlier anger and the considerable risk there would have been in digging him out, Jarlaxle had expected Artemis to let him.

He felt awash with some warm, nameless emotion when he looked across at Entreri, remembering his hands and his voice, his solidity at Jarlaxle’s back, and watching his fingers now moving over the flute. There was a sadness in his faraway look, and for a moment, Jarlaxle could hear Ilnezhara mocking him, pressing the mirror into his hand. He didn’t need to look, he realized.

“We should teach you a few marching tunes,” Jarlaxle said, frowning at the ragged edge in his voice.

Entreri looked up, tucking away the flute and the open expression on his face as he slid over to Jarlaxle’s side. “No,” he said, face carefully serious as he studied Jarlaxle’s. “That might encourage you to sing, and no one wants that.”

Jarlaxle wheezed out a laugh. “I have a lovely singing voice, I’ll have you know.”

“You also think you have a great sense of fashion, yet you saunter about wearing a purple hat.”

“You are so rude to my poor hat.” Only then did Jarlaxle realize he wasn’t wearing it or his eyepatch, and he frowned, anxiety suddenly seizing his lungs.

Entreri read his expression too well. “They are right behind you. I did not think you would find sleeping in them comfortable.”

Jarlaxle hummed, eyeing Entreri. The hat certainly, but they both knew Jarlaxle generally took his reverie with the eyepatch on. Still, that left him looking up at Artemis—only Artemis—with both eyes, and that was not so bad a thing, he supposed.

Jarlaxle reached for his hand, and Entreri flinched, pulling his hand back on instinct. Jarlaxle sighed. “Why do you move away every time I move closer? This is a dance, not a battle, Artemis. You do not need to keep giving ground.”

“‘This’?” Entreri had that guarded look again. Jarlaxle just raised an eyebrow.

“It is ‘later’,” Jarlaxle reminded him, but Entreri shook his head.

“Not here.”

Jarlaxle nodded, relenting. But he reached out again, slowly, broadcasting his movements, and this time Artemis didn’t flinch away. “I take it both of our quarry got away?”

Entreri sighed, trying not to think about the delicate hand curled around his. “This was an unmitigated disaster.”

Jarlaxle was inclined to agree. He let his eyes slip shut. “Did your gauntlet work on her mace?”

Entreri gave him a curious look. “Yes,” he answered, as much a question as a statement.

Jarlaxle hummed sleepily. “I was going to suggest it.” His words started to slur again with exhaustion. “But you are ever clever, my friend.”

“Perhaps not a complete loss, then,” Entreri mused. “Is Kimmuriel still tracking the boy?”

But Jarlaxle had slipped off again, his breathing slow and steady, hand still curled around Entreri’s. He looked pale, Entreri reflected, the shadows under his eyes a bruise against gray skin, but Entreri clamped down on the spike of concern. He would be all right.

And the next time he saw Lorica, he would kill her.

 

It took a bit of cajoling, but eventually Kimmuriel stopped glaring long enough to transport them past the traps, farther into the mine. They found themselves in an open cave, in front of a building half-carved out of the dirt. It was grand, boasting pillars thicker than their apartment building and doorways fit for giants. A temple to the god of storms, buried under the earth, and Entreri supposed there was a sort of irony to be found there, if he cared to look.

“Magnificent,” Jarlaxle murmured, even as he looked around, and Entreri had no doubt his eyepatch was revealing things he could not see. “Dead, but magnificent.”

“‘Dead’?”

Jarlaxle shrugged. His fingers flit over his eyepatch, adjusting how it sat, and Entreri tried not to think about how gray the drow still looked. “There was magic here, once—quite a bit of it—and it has left traces, but…” He shook his head. “It’s like the way a rock absorbs the sun’s warmth and stays warm for a while, only for the cold to slowly leech that warmth after it sets.”

Entreri wondered if that analogy were tailored to him.

“Interesting,” Jarlaxle said to himself before trotting up the steps into the building proper. Entreri followed a few steps behind in case he set off any ancient traps.

“You use that word more often than it is merited.”

Jarlaxle didn’t glance back, but Entreri could see the way his cheeks lifted in a smile. “Truly? What an interesting observation.”

Entreri rolled his eyes but played along. “An interesting choice of words.”

“All my words are interesting.”

The interior was less impressive. Any windows it might have had were blocked off, as was more than half of the nave. They had barely excavated it at all, it seemed.

Jarlaxle patted an alcove in the wall with a gloved hand, managing to make the way he was supporting himself against the wall look casual. “I believe our idol rested here.”

“And I believe he had a friend.” Entreri gave a pointed glance across the way, where a matching alcove lay empty.

Jarlaxle hummed and tapped his lip. “Recent?”

Entreri took a closer look. The alcove itself looked like it had only been recently carved out, a path dug directly to it rather than a swatch around it. He nodded. “And deliberate.”

“Should we assume it was cursed as well?”

“I believe we should.”

“Most interesting.”

“Suicidal might be a better adjective.” Entreri rubbed at the middle of his forehead, where the close air was giving him a headache. “Or foolish. What was the plan, here? To curse Brien as well?”

“Or Lorica twice,” Jarlaxle suggested with a half-shrug. “Brien did say the ‘curse’ gave her superior strength. If she already cares little what happens to her…” He trailed off meaningfully.

“Then suicidal is the adjective.”

Jarlaxle hummed.

“They’d meant to collapse the tunnel after them and shut this place off for good.”

“In—”

“I swear, if you say the word ‘interesting’ again, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”

Jarlaxle’s lips curled in a smirk. “Intriguing.”

Entreri groaned.

Jarlaxle gave him a coy look out of the corner of his eye. “If my word choice bothers you, there are easy ways to shut me up, you know.”

Entreri kept staring at the empty alcove, as though avoiding eye-contact with Jarlaxle would keep him from turning colors. He was used to Jarlaxle’s outrageous flirtations but not directed at him, at least not seriously, and suddenly the stale air seemed warmer than it had a moment ago.

But Jarlaxle was not one to be ignored. He leaned into Artemis, shoulder to shoulder, and mused aloud, “Now, what could you possibly do, that would keep my mouth occupied?”

“Shove my dagger down your throat?” Entreri replied automatically, only to cringe at his word choice.

“A bit forward, again, but I like a man who’s direct.”

Entreri gave him a flat look, which Jarlaxle just returned with one large, red eye. His warmth seeped into Entreri’s skin where they were still touching.

“You know what you could do,” Entreri said, dropping his voice to a low husk, “that would please me?” He turned just a little, leaned in just a little, and Jarlaxle’s eye dropped to his lips, tilting his head in clear expectation of a kiss.

“What’s that, _abbil_?” he asked in a low purr.

He leaned in, and Entreri stopped him with a hand on his jaw. “You could get me the hells out of here.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tough chapter, my friends. Jarlaxle and Artemis finally have their Talk.

They had collapsed the entry to the mine behind them, burying the fugitives’ camp and whatever other secrets lay beneath the earth, and there was a special kind of relief when they returned home. Jarlaxle had tutted at the blood on his clothes, but such were the hazards of his occupation.

“Lorica is getting desperate,” he observed as Entreri finished shaving, “and reckless. More reckless. I suspect she will make our next step easier.”

“And our next step is?” Entreri asked, wiping down his face and reaching up to test the smoothness of his cheek.

“To wait.”

Entreri chuffed. “And you are quite certain she and her pet mage won’t run off somewhere tropical in the meantime?”

Jarlaxle took the opportunity to admire the clean edges of Artemis’ jaw. “No, I suspect they consider their business unfinished.”

“Then _I_ might run off somewhere tropical in the meantime.”

Jarlaxle laughed. “And leave me at the mercy of the dragon sisters? Terribly cruel.”

Entreri gave him a wry look as he put away his shaving kit. “I was under the impression that you enjoyed their ‘mercies’.” Over his head, on the wall, was the silhouette he’d painted, and Jarlaxle wondered what it said that he’d buried his dagger in the middle of the silhouette’s chest this time.

“Perhaps I am more interested in yours, at the moment,” Jarlaxle said, changing the tone of the conversation as he glided around to Entreri’s bed, sitting next to him. They were both clean, fed, relaxed. It seemed as good a time as any for it to be “later”.

“I have no mercy,” Entreri countered, the subtle gathering of tension in his shoulders saying he knew exactly where Jarlaxle was going with this.

“There is an appeal in that, as well.”

Entreri turned his head just slightly, watching Jarlaxle more out of the corner of his eye than anything, and Jarlaxle felt like he was a threat being sized up. He huffed, moving to lean against the footboard and giving Entreri a few more inches of space.

“What?” Entreri asked, turning a scowl his way. At least now he was looking at Jarlaxle directly.

“From what I have witnessed, you are not this guarded with the women you have bedded.”

“You are not a woman.”

“While I am glad you’ve noticed, you are still side-stepping my point. Or _is_ that your point? Are you like this with the men you have bedded?”

Jarlaxle watched in amazement as Artemis outright stuttered. “W…with the men I’ve…?”

Jarlaxle tilted his head curiously. “You have not been with other men?”

Entreri’s expression shuttered again, and Jarlaxle wondered what, exactly, he was locking away. “I have had little interest in the past.”

“You have shown little interest in women too, yet you have bedded them,” Jarlaxle pointed out, and he watched Entreri’s jaw tighten. “And you say, ‘in the past’? That has clearly changed.”

Entreri threw the flute between them like an accusation, and it laid there, innocently denting the sheets.

“So the flute is working?” Jarlaxle asked as though pleasantly surprised by the implication. Entreri just scowled out at nothing. “Is this the problem, then? The… unfamiliarity?”

Entreri wiped a hand over his face, the frustration Jarlaxle found there telling him he hadn’t hit the mark just yet. “I did not say it was unfamiliar,” he muttered, so softly that Jarlaxle almost didn’t hear.

Jarlaxle fought to keep the frustration off of his own face. They were talking in circles. “Is it because of the… _familiarity_ , then? Because it is me?”

There was that look again that Jarlaxle didn’t know what to do with, and then Entreri squeezed his eyes shut.

“ _Abbil_ ,” Jarlaxle sighed, keeping his tone gentle. “I know it may seem like it, but I do not, in fact, have powers of prognostication. You need to give me _something_.”

Entreri opened and closed his mouth a few times before blowing out a sigh and saying, “I do not wish to hate you.”

It was an odd thing to say, and Jarlaxle found himself taken aback. His first impulse was to make light of the comment— _but_ _you tell me you hate me on a daily basis!_ —but an uneasy feeling settled in his gut, telling him that Artemis was hinting at something not to be mocked.

Now Artemis was tense again.

“Let’s spar,” Jarlaxle suggested abruptly.

Entreri shot him a startled look. “What?”

“Let’s spar. I think we could both use it.”

 

Some of the snow had melted, but the roof was still an icy deathtrap. Jarlaxle just beamed at him and beckoned him on, each hand twirling a dagger.

Entreri hesitated. Jarlaxle should still be resting, he thought, but there had been something determined in his look that had made Entreri pause, and truly he had been relieved by the change in subject. He considered going easy, only to laugh at himself. One did not “go easy” on Jarlaxle; one _survived_ Jarlaxle.

The dagger coming for his face reminded him of that.

Entreri cursed, dodging to the side, slip-sliding under Jarlaxle’s attacks as he closed the space between them, focused enough on his footing to keep his balance even on the icy patches. With a twitch of his hands, Jarlaxle’s daggers grew to swords, and Jarlaxle side-stepped neatly, or side-slid, letting the momentum carry him past Entreri’s strike. He spun, bringing one sword around to swat at Artemis’ ass with the flat of his blade.

Entreri squawked, batting aside the weapon before it connected and throwing Jarlaxle a profoundly offended look. Jarlaxle grinned as Entreri stalked towards him, parrying his sword’s attack and dodging his dagger’s. Entreri easily defeated his riposte, but stuttered in his next attack when Jarlaxle blew him a kiss instead of bringing his second sword to bear. The flat of his blade managed to hit Entreri’s ass this time.

Entreri scowled while Jarlaxle laughed. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously at all.”

“And I think you’re taking this much too seriously! Besides, I’m winning!”

The stab for his face said Entreri was not amused, but Jarlaxle grinned all the wider. Even though he knew how Entreri moved, he was still a difficult enemy to predict, and when Charon’s Claw made a stab for his crotch, Jarlaxle wisely jumped back.

“Careful!” Jarlaxle scolded. “You’d be punishing us both!”

“Hardly.”

Entreri’s dance of blades put Jarlaxle on the defensive then, pouring all his concentration into meeting those blades until he tangled both Entreri’s weapons with his own in a double block.

Their blades locked. Meeting Jarlaxle’s smile with a glare, Entreri had a few options for breaking the grip, but he settled for the one that felt like vengeance. He leaned between their blades to press their lips together in an open-mouthed kiss.

Jarlaxle made a strangled grunt of surprise, leaning into the kiss rather than countering as Entreri suspected he would, and Entreri used that to his advantage, shoving him back and sending both his swords spinning wide out of his grasp.

Jarlaxle huffed. “Oh, now you’re just being a tease.”

“Just using the resources at my disposal,” Entreri innocently replied. His heart pounded from more than just the fight.

Jarlaxle licked his lips, circling Artemis but not reaching for his daggers. “Oh, I am sure you are. Do you plan to use that hidden dagger for the finishing blow?” He looked pointedly down, and only then did Artemis notice his physical reaction. Entreri choked, and Jarlaxle used _that_ to _his_ advantage, ducking in under Entreri’s blades and tackling him into a snow bank.

Entreri found himself under Jarlaxle, neither of them feeling the snow’s bite of cold with their enchanted jewelry. Slight pressure to Entreri’s pinned wrists had him dropping his weapons, but he hardly noticed, for that was when Jarlaxle’s lips claimed his.

It was pleasant, at first—pleasurable, even—with the heat of Jarlaxle’s body blanketing his, and even if he couldn’t feel the cold, he could feel the heat, the wet slide of Jarlaxle’s tongue against his, the gentle sting of teeth on his lower lip. Those lips slid down to his throat, those teeth nipping the skin under his jaw, and Artemis tilted his head back to let them, not recognizing the soft, choked-off sounds as coming from him but feeling Jarlaxle’s answering purr in his bones. A thigh pressed against his crotch, and Artemis stuttered out a breath, rocking up into the pressure.

But when the heat against his hip registered as Jarlaxle’s erection, reminding his body that he was pinned under a man, everything shifted sideways.

“Relax, _abbil_ ,” Jarlaxle said, Artemis’ ear prickling where his breath ghosted.

Relax. Except Artemis didn’t know how to do that with someone—with a _man_ —pressed so close. When Jarlaxle’s lips returned to his, he didn’t return the kiss so much as accept it, jigsawed memories rearranging themselves behind his eyes. Fear crawled up his throat, and he wanted to be away, far away, wanted his dagger in his hand, wanted…

The hand creeping up under his shirt sent a shivering mix of desire, fear, and guilt down into his stomach, and Artemis finally remembered how to move, jerking back from the brush of fingers against his skin and shoving Jarlaxle back. Then his dagger was in his hand, though he didn’t remember reaching for it.

“ _Abbil_?”

His breathing was ragged but not with want, and Jarlaxle leaned over him to look him in the eye, one hand poised to deflect the hand holding the dagger. A dark hand reached up for his face, and Artemis flinched at the touch, tried to school his expression, to pull the tattered pieces of himself together, closing his eyes against the concern he could see creeping into Jarlaxle’s one exposed eye.

“Artemis, breathe. Look at me.”

The hand on his cheek pulled gently, turning Artemis to face Jarlaxle fully, and Artemis finally opened his eyes, looking at Jarlaxle’s chin instead. Artemis braced himself for the questions, for the flood of chatter, something, but instead he just watched Jarlaxle’s face fall, concern slipping into something like understanding.

The dagger slid from his hand again.

Jarlaxle nodded to himself, the hand on Artemis’ cheek lingering a moment before slipping away. “I will be downstairs. Join me when you like.” No judgment in his tone, no demand. He simply slid away from Artemis and levitated off the roof.

The charge in the air left with Jarlaxle, and Artemis finally felt like he could breathe. He sat up, leaned forward to put his head in his hands, gritting his teeth when he felt his hands shaking. He barely registered getting up, barely registered moving, but he did register the pain and the crack of ice under his knuckles when he punched the wall.

 

Artemis had calmed by the time he crept back into their apartment, his hands almost steady. Jarlaxle sat by the fire with a drink in hand, boots propped up on a thick pillow. He had to see Artemis’ bleeding knuckles, but Jarlaxle just smiled at him and waved him towards the empty chair across from him.

Warily, Artemis approached the chair but didn’t sit. He was still tense, aware of his exits, mapping out the quickest routes.

Jarlaxle held up a glass. “Brandy?”

Artemis didn’t care for brandy, but alcohol was alcohol. He scraped the answer off the back of his throat, “Yes.”

“Sit, please,” Jarlaxle said gently, a request, as he poured two fingers’ worth of brandy into a glass for Artemis.

“I do not wish to talk about it,” Artemis said stiffly as he took the glass, preempting whatever Jarlaxle was winding up for.

“Then do not talk.” Jarlaxle took off his hat and set it on the side table. “I am capable of speaking enough for us both.”

Artemis’ snort said he believed that. Slowly, he lowered himself into the highbacked chair, though he stayed perched at the edge, ready to bolt. A sip of brandy did wonders to calm him.

“This is not new to me, you understand,” Jarlaxle said, and Artemis looked up at that, a question in his eyes. Jarlaxle offered him a sad smile. “My band collects warriors, mages, and others from destroyed houses. Menzoberranzan is not a kind place, but it is often the least kind to those who find their way to me.”

Artemis made a soft disbelieving sound at the thought of these recruits finding _Jarlaxle_ and not the other way around.

“Your… reaction I have seen before,” Jarlaxle sighed, “in warriors who experienced more than they could bear. Usually, it is something that reminds them of a particular battle that triggers this.” Jarlaxle gave Artemis a long look, and Artemis tensed again, darting a look at the closest door. “I suspect I know what kind of battle you faced once, long ago. How old were you?”

“I said I didn’t wish to talk about this,” Artemis snapped, surprising himself but not Jarlaxle with the intensity in his voice.

“Apologies. I did agree to that.” Jarlaxle was still just so… _calm_. It made Artemis’ skin itch. “So, let me make a few inferences then, and you can shake your head if I am wrong. Or throw something at me. Preferably not the glass, however. That crystal is very fine.”

Artemis made a note to throw the glass first. He was clutching it tight enough to break, anyway.

“Nod if those terms are agreeable.”

Artemis shot him a glare, but then his gaze drifted to the side and he nodded jerkily.

“This was when you were a child, before you had learned to fight.” Jarlaxle stared at him, and Artemis didn’t shake his head or throw anything, simply clenched his jaw tighter. “It was someone you trusted or should have been able to trust.”

Artemis just stared hollowly down at his drink, that numbness creeping over him again.

Jarlaxle leaned forward, elbows on his knees, encouraged by the lack of hostility so far. “An authority figure? A…” He recalled their conversation at the Spirit Soaring. “…priest?”

Artemis swallowed and shook his head tightly.

Jarlaxle tried again. “Family member?” Odd for a drow to think about, knowing that family was often the last thing one wanted to trust in the Underdark, but the surface, he’d found, was different. And Artemis didn’t shake his head, just stared down at the carpet with a dead-eyed look. “Your father?”

Artemis’ lip curled, and he took a long drink. But Jarlaxle noticed that he didn’t shake his head.

“I am sorry, _abbil_.”

“Save it,” Artemis snapped before he’d finished talking. He drained the rest of his glass. Jarlaxle didn’t even know the half of it.

“Is this what you meant when you said you didn’t want to hate me? You didn’t want to associate me with these memories?”

Artemis’ expression was tight, but, again, Jarlaxle noted he didn’t shake his head. “Is your curiosity sated, now?”

“This is not about my curiosity, my friend. I would like to help.”

Artemis tried to scoff, but it came out too breathy and ragged to be convincing. “Help? What help could you possibly give me?”

“I cannot take away those memories, but I could, perhaps, replace them with fresher, better memories.”

Artemis gave him a disbelieving look.

“Provided that is something you want,” Jarlaxle added. “Provided… _this_ is something you want.”

Artemis fiddled with his glass and did not answer. He didn’t know what to do with this, this push-pull of emotions.

Jarlaxle sighed softly but finally took a sip of his own drink. “I do not expect an answer just now. But, should you choose to go forward, now that I know what we are dealing with, there are ways to work around this. It will take some time, however.”

Artemis could feel Jarlaxle’s stare boring into his face, but he just kept staring at the rug. He’d blame the numbness in his fingers on the drink.

Jarlaxle noticed he wasn’t shaking his head, wasn’t arguing, wasn’t disagreeing. “For now, let us find some other distraction, yes? Let me see what you have managed to do to your hand…”

 

Jarlaxle chewed at his thumbnail as he tried to focus on Kimmuriel’s words. Artemis had left the apartment “to get some air”, and Jarlaxle figured he needed the space. So much of the past few weeks had clicked into place, so much of the past few _years_ , and Jarlaxle could kick himself for not picking up on the signs earlier. He had never seen such naked terror on the man’s face.

“As for Lorica, I unfortunately have no information…”

“Hold on,” Jarlaxle said, pausing Kimmuriel mid-sentence when his previous words caught up to him. “Brien is not with Lorica?”

Kimmuriel hesitated, the subtlest furrowing of his brow telling Jarlaxle that Kimmuriel had already said as much, and he shook himself, bringing his attention back around.

“Apologies,” Jarlaxle said. “My thoughts were elsewhere.”

“He is alone,” Kimmuriel confirmed, still eyeing Jarlaxle cautiously. “He ran when Entreri chased him and did not return for her. He seems uninterested in finding her again, as well.”

“Dammit,” Jarlaxle hissed. “Where is he now?”

“He _was_ hiding in one of the hamlets the two of them hadn’t destroyed, but now he is running, and I am not sure where.”

That would make things substantially more difficult.

“You seem… angry,” Kimmuriel prodded.

“I am irritated that we have lost our quarry, yes.”

“I mean, you have seemed angry this entire conversation, before you learned of that.”

Jarlaxle adjusted his eyepatch, but he supposed one did not need to read his mind to figure that out. “Kimmuriel… if I had only a specific human’s last name and approximate age, is there a way you could hunt them down and kill them for me?”

Kimmuriel eyed him warily, and Jarlaxle could tell it vexed him that he couldn’t see what Jarlaxle was thinking. “I would be killing a whole generation of one particular human family in order to do that. No great loss, but… why?”

Jarlaxle chewed his lip, wondered if it would be better or worse to wipe out a whole swath of older Entreris. He offered Kimmuriel a smile that wasn’t quite reassuring. “Just a whimsy of mine. Pay it no mind.”

 

The apartment’s emptiness was starting to grate on Jarlaxle, and he had just picked up his hat to go out for a few drinks when Artemis returned, looking calm and oddly determined. He gave Jarlaxle a look that made his breath catch.

“I have just spoken with Kimmuriel,” Jarlaxle said, just to say something. Entreri approached, and Jarlaxle resisted the instinct to step back. “He says that, ah…”

Artemis’ lips cut him off, one hand cupping the back of his head with a gentleness that seemed at odds with such sword-callused fingers. Jarlaxle closed his eyes and leaned into the kiss, sinking his fingers into Artemis’ hair but letting him lead, smiling when he found there was already the scratch of stubble.

Even when the kiss ended, Artemis held him close, their foreheads pressed together, his thumb stroking gentle circles into the skin behind Jarlaxle’s ear. This was why he liked humans, Jarlaxle reflected; few drow would bother with such niceties.

“Should I take that as a ‘yes’?” Jarlaxle murmured.

He could feel Artemis’ huff of breath against his cheek. “Yes. They have taken enough from me.”

… “they”?

But now was not the time to ask, and Jarlaxle suspected this was a story which he would only ever know pieces of.

“I have a suggestion,” Jarlaxle said, bringing his hands up to clasp behind Artemis’ neck. Artemis eyed him warily but nodded for him to continue. “You lead, at least for now. Just pretend I am a maiden you want to woo, or something.”

Artemis looked at him doubtfully. “You already seem pretty wooed to me.”

“I could play hard to get.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Jarlaxle huffed, pushing him back to arms’ length. “You doubt my acting skills?”

“I doubt your ability to keep it in your pants.”

For all that he was pretending to be offended, Jarlaxle was pleased to see amusement glittering in Artemis’ gray eyes. The look on his face on the rooftop had been haunting him.

“The best way to woo me, by the way,” Jarlaxle said primly as he regretfully pulled away, “is to buy me shiny things.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Artemis drawled. “This is why we have established you would make a fine prostitute.”

Jarlaxle’s mouth dropped open in pretend shock. He held up one admonishing finger. “Second suggestion: don’t call the person you’re trying to woo a prostitute!”

“I did not call you a prostitute. I said you would _make_ a fine prostitute. And it is not like I would judge you—I kill for money.”

“And yet, somehow I feel like you are judging me.”

“For plenty of other things, yes.”

Jarlaxle threw him a scowl he knew Artemis didn’t believe for a moment and watched Artemis’ lips lift in the barest of smiles, his eyes unusually bright. It made something melt inside Jarlaxle’s chest, his lungs strangely tight.

Artemis cleared his throat and dropped his gaze. “Anyway, you were saying about Kimmuriel?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the panic attack and subsequent scene by the fire were actually the first scenes I wrote for this fic. I knew this was going to be a hurdle and wanted to see if I could make it Work, and while I'm still not sure I'm happy with either scene, it felt important to write them.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~nnnnot sure if the scene at the end of the chapter falls under the mature or explicit category~~

For all that they had lost their quarry, Jarlaxle was surprisingly chipper as he ooh’d and ahh’d over Ilnezhara’s newest collection of magical baubles. Entreri deepened his scowl for the sake of balance.

It didn’t help that Jarlaxle had brought a box of Piter’s cupcakes as a peace offering and was now eating one with an enjoyment that Artemis found… distracting.

“Piter has really outdone himself,” he said, before licking a bit of frosting off his finger with a groan that, in light of their conversation the other night, had all of Artemis’ blood traveling in the wrong direction.

Entreri stayed off to the side, leaning against a drafty window just to cool himself off, glaring up at the ceiling as though it had done him personal harm and wondering why he had let Jarlaxle drag him along. He was trying to figure out what had caused the gouge in the beam above him when Jarlaxle sauntered over, leaning against the window next to him, pressing them together hip to shoulder as he held out the plate of cupcakes with an innocent smile.

Entreri dragged his gaze back down to Jarlaxle. “Stop trying to feed me pastries.”

“Are you watching your figure?” Ilnezhara asked, eyeing the two of them and how closely they stood together with a suspicious amount of glee.

“You can just lick the frosting off,” Jarlaxle told him in a conspiratorial whisper even though he set the plate down on the windowsill. “I won’t tell anyone.” In a low purr, he added, “I can watch your figure for you.”

Entreri gave him a pained look. “It’s more likely you’ll watch my boot go up your ass.”

Ilnezhara let out an unladylike snicker, going back to polishing the new jewelry she’d acquired, each piece boasting a gem that glowed with magical energy. Artemis was almost flattered that Jarlaxle had interrupted his salivating to stand next to him.

Still, he jumped when a hand slipped up his shoulder to the back of his neck.

“It is awfully cold over here, _abbil_. I thought you were a desert creature?”

“What are you doing?” Entreri snapped, neck muscles tense under Jarlaxle’s palm. His fingers slid up into Artemis’ hair, massaging the back of his scalp. The touch drew out a shiver, and Jarlaxle gave him a knowing smile.

“Touch,” Jarlaxle informed him, keeping his voice low enough for only Artemis to hear. “I know you are averse to it, but if you tense at even the smallest of my touches, there is not far we can go. I am simply trying to get you accustomed to it.”

Entreri gritted his teeth and made a sound that was meant to be a growl but didn’t quite reach, his sour look negated by the way he leaned into Jarlaxle’s fingers. Artemis had had little by way of affectionate touch in his life, and from the look on his face, he suspected Jarlaxle knew that.

“So, Jarlaxle?” Ilezhara asked him, holding aloft a gold ring that glinted in the cold sunlight. “Are you interested in buying it?”

Jarlaxle brightened before fluttering his eyelashes at Artemis, his fingers still rubbing soothing circles into his scalp. “Shiny things,” he reminded.

Entreri gave him an incredulous look, but the jangling of the door’s bell cut off his protest, particularly when he saw who it was.

Brien was shaking with more than cold, he suspected, as the boy pulled back his hood, face a nearly translucent white in contrast to his freckles and the heavy shadows under his eyes. He’d shaved his distinctive red curls.

“My… my lady Ilnezhara,” he said, bowing his head, only to freeze when he caught sight of the pair by the window, eyes growing comically wide. Entreri kicked the door closed with a slam, the bell jingling frenetically as it banged against the wood. He blocked the boy’s exit, calmly folding his arms and lamenting the loss of Jarlaxle’s talented fingers.

Jarlaxle held up the plate. “Cupcake?”

Brien stared at the cupcakes with an appropriate level of confusion. “Um… no. Thank you.”

“So the little thief returns to my shop,” Ilnezhara said, her voice a dangerous purr, and Entreri imagined he could hear her dragon’s growl underneath. She sauntered around the counter, her movements a snake-like sort of graceful, her smile a baring of teeth. “How brave. How stupid.”

Brien shriveled, smart enough to offer her a bow as she approached. “My lady… I have come to make amends and to ask a favor of your…” His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, looking between Entreri and Jarlaxle. “…well. They are already here, so I suppose I could just ask them.”

“You are hardly in a position to ask favors,” Entreri said, voice as hard as his stare.

Jarlaxle crossed his legs at the ankle and plucked up another cupcake for himself.

“I… I know. Just hear me out, at least?” As Brien spoke, he reached under his cloak for a pouch at his belt. Entreri dropped his hands to his weapons’ hilts, but Brien kept his movements slow. “I, um. I need…” With another little bow, he slipped past Ilnezhara and emptied the pouch’s contents onto an empty swatch of counter.

Jarlaxle stopped chewing.

It was the second idol, similar in shape and style to the first but better preserved. The air seemed to hum around it, its eyes glowing a gem-like red.

“Be careful not to touch it,” Brien said as the other three gathered around the counter. He fidgeted, and his hands didn’t seem to know where to land. “The curse is still… I have not touched it.”

“But Lorica wanted you to,” Jarlaxle said softly.

Brien winced but nodded. “I was going to. I wanted to. I was caught up in her zeal, but then… Anyway, we dug day and night trying to find it, but then when I saw it, I…” He shuddered. “Her faith is stronger than mine. I put it in the pouch and told her I’d think about it.”

Entreri snorted. “Bet she loved that after going through all that trouble.”

“We argued, yes. Continually.”

Jarlaxle fluttered his eyelashes at Entreri. “Sounds like us.”

Entreri smirked. “No, it doesn’t.”

“And what?” Ilnezhara asked, upper body draped insouciantly across the counter, chin propped up on her fist. “You two have separated, and now you have had a change of heart?”

“I…” Brien looked down at his hands. “I know you bought the other idol and thought I could sell this one to you—”

“Sell?” Ilnezhara laughed.

Brien bowed his head again. “—for your good will, not your money. Lorica is… she is going to do something stupid, and I don’t want her to get herself killed.”

“How stupid?” Entreri asked.

Brien gave him a pained look.

 

Jarlaxle was still eating cupcakes when they left, one magical item richer. _It really is too ugly_ , Ilnezhara had insisted, though Entreri knew better than to assume it was a gift. Even with his gauntlet, he was hesitant to handle the thing, its presence like the skittering of spider legs down his spine.

“Do you know what it is?” Jarlaxle asked with the sly smile that said he thought he was being clever.

“Hideous?” Entreri grumbled as he reset the locks and traps on their apartment door.

Jarlaxle hummed, pausing to lick a stripe of frosting off the latest cupcake. One-handed, he unclasped his cloak and set it on the hook in one fluid motion, his hat following soon after. “It’s a Soul Gem.”

Entreri’s hand stilled on the wire he was holding. “What?”

“A Soul Gem. With a fancy case, certainly, but if we tore it apart, I am certain we’d find an appropriate gem lending its eyes that fantastic glow. But the magic within the first one has clearly deteriorated, and whatever creature’s soul it had imprisoned was able to reach out.”

“So, Lorica doesn’t have superstrength. She’s possessed.”

Jarlaxle hummed again. “By something—or someone—very old, even by my standards. A demon, most likely. That it has driven her half mad is hardly surprising. I suspect we are dealing with two personalities with different agendas.”

Entreri shook his head. “What use would either personality have for the original idol?”

Jarlaxle paused to consider that and shrugged. “Nostalgia, perhaps. Lorica likely believes it’s the source of her ‘power’, a connection to her god, and that is what I suspect Brien believes as well. The demon—or whatever is possessing her—would likely want the thing destroyed or at least out of the hands of someone who could put it back.”

The whole thing was a mess. “I had sex with a possessed woman. Lovely.”

“I’ve slept with worse.”

“I know,” Entreri grumbled, checking his work before straightening. “I was in the next room for many of them.”

Jarlaxle crammed the rest of his cupcake into his mouth, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk. “At least I’m trading up,” he said with his mouth full, earning a curled lip of disgust from Artemis as Jarlaxle sidled up to him, draping an arm around his shoulders, still chewing.

“I hope you are aware that that is the opposite of sexy.”

“What? I can’t have a kiss?”

“There’s cake in your teeth.”

“That’s not a ‘no’.” Jarlaxle puckered his lips and leaned in, but Artemis put a hand in his face and pushed him back.

“It’s a ‘no’.”

Jarlaxle chuckled and shrugged, slipping away to find the appropriate wine to wash the cupcakes down with. He took his time, humming and tapping his lip as he considered the small wine rack he’d set up in the corner. Entreri shook his head, certain Jarlaxle’s stomach wouldn’t thank him for any of it later.

“So a Soul Gem,” Entreri said, picking up the earlier threads of conversation. “Do you think Ilnezhara knows?”

“Oh, indubitably,” Jarlaxle said without glancing back, finally plucking a bottle from the rack. “They are rare but valuable. In fact, I suspect she knew the other one was too.”

Entreri wiped a hand over his face. “Dragons,” he muttered, sitting on his bed to kick off his boots. “How many more are in that temple, do you think?”

“Could be none,” Jarlaxle said. Entreri noticed he was pouring wine into two glasses, pausing to take a sip from one. “Could be dozens. A shame we’ll never find out, with the mine collapsed.”

Entreri didn’t believe that for a moment and suspected Bregan D’aerthe would be poking around the temple before the week was out. “Indeed. A shame.”

The wine glass was warm to the touch, the way Jarlaxle’s hand was warm as it brushed his. Entreri looked up into his uncovered eye and wondered if he had an agenda, not with the gems at the moment—he knew Jarlaxle had an agenda there—but with him. But there was warmth in Jarlaxle’s gaze too.

Jarlaxle was just starting to slip away when Artemis pulled him back, callused fingers gentle on his wrist. He watched in bemusement as Artemis set his wine on the end table and then did the same with Jarlaxle’s glass, pulling it easily from his fingers before pulling him in. Jarlaxle obligingly bent in for the kiss, hands braced on Artemis’ shoulders.

“Change your mind about the cupcakes?” he teased, voice falling to a lower register.

“Shut up,” Entreri groused before sealing their lips together again, if only to keep him from talking.

Jarlaxle was still chuckling when Artemis pulled him into his lap, words forgotten when the kiss turned into something heated. He brushed his thumb against the grain of Artemis’ stubble, brought a finger up to trace the round shell of his ear, little racial differences Jarlaxle had always found fascinating, a texture that was distinctly Artemis. He felt more than heard Artemis’ amused huff, and then Artemis’ lips pulled away to trail a line down his neck, the stubble scratchy against his skin. Jarlaxle let out a ragged breath against his cheek, shifting subtly in his lap so that his thighs more comfortably bracketed Artemis’ hips.

When Artemis’ lips found his ear, licking the lobe and pinching it between his teeth, Jarlaxle shuddered and arched, the hands that were exploring the planes of Artemis’ back turning to claws. He could feel Artemis’ smirk against his skin.

“Y-You’ve had elf lovers before I take it?” Jarlaxle asked, voice rough. Teeth found the tip of his ear, and he tilted his head, a whine caught in his throat, unsure if he wanted to lean into or away from the sensations.

“Did I not tell you to stop talking?” His words were more a purr than a grumble, and Jarlaxle found he liked the feel of them against his ear.

“Perhaps I just wanted to hear you say it again.” He pressed his hips into Artemis’, aware of the rush of his blood and the heaviness of his pulse.

Jarlaxle felt the heat of Artemis’ gaze, then the shift of Artemis’ muscles before he moved, pulling Jarlaxle onto the bed and rolling them in the same motion, laying him out on his back, still between his thighs. Long fingers tugged in Artemis’ hair, pulling his head back to pull him into another kiss, a hungrier kiss, and then his hands were everywhere, trying to commit the shape of his human to memory.

The slow roll of Artemis’ hips sets up a delicious friction, his teeth at Jarlaxle’s neck sending a shiver down his spine, and Jarlaxle murmured encouragements in Drow. Jarlaxle itched to touch, to run his fingers along bare skin, but he was letting Artemis set the boundaries here, remembering his face on the rooftop and never wanting to see that look again. Then a hand slipped under his shirt, and Jarlaxle smiled as the boundaries moved just a little. He tugged at Artemis’ clothing until his fingers found skin, taut muscle fluttering under his touch, only to find hands on his wrists and his wrists pinned over his head.

The look Artemis gave him was teasingly reproachful—a look Jarlaxle would never have painted on Artemis Entreri’s face—and Jarlaxle understood: here, as anywhere, Artemis needed to be in control. Jarlaxle, content to let him have it for now, obligingly wrapped his fingers around the headboard, fighting to keep his amusement off his face as he arched an eyebrow up at him that said, _well_?

That look was met with a smirk and then a teasing brush of lips along his jaw, callused fingers returning to Jarlaxle’s waist, rucking up his shirt to explore the smooth skin beneath. Jarlaxle let out an appreciative sigh, arching up into his touch and baring his throat to Artemis’ mouth. One hand continued down, teasing over his waistband, fingers light, almost curious, as they traced the shape of him through his pants. Jarlaxle spotted the uncertainty that flitted over Artemis’ face but also watched him shove it aside, his hand palming Jarlaxle with more confidence.

A moan stuttered out of Jarlaxle as he tilted his hips up into the heat of Artemis’ hand. “Artemis,” he groaned, the name coming from his chest. He could feel the weight of Artemis’ stare, eyes dark and hungry but still tempered, and he saw a challenge in that as he stared back. Jarlaxle wanted so badly to see him unravel.

But Entreri wanted the same thing out of him, to go from the determined way he plucked open Jarlaxle’s laces and pulled him out, skin sliding along skin, and Jarlaxle had the distinct impression he was being studied. His breathing deepened, each movement of Artemis’ hand sending pleasure shivering up his spine. Ilnezhara’s teasing words about Artemis being good with a sword flashed through his mind, and Jarlaxle found himself choking off a breathy laugh.

“What?” Entreri asked, his irritated tone doing little to hide his uncertainty.

“Apologies, _abbil_ ,” Jarlaxle said, taking one hand off the headboard long enough to stroke his cheek. “I was just thinking: you really are good with swords.”

Entreri gave an amused snort, hand still moving, the swipe of his thumb pulling a liquid moan from Jarlaxle’s throat. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s more a dagger.”

Jarlaxle shook with a sound that was half-moan, half-laugh. “You… you know my daggers, _abbil_. A… a flick of your wrist i-is all it takes to… turn them into swords!”

Artemis’ put-upon sigh wafted over Jarlaxle’s cheek. “Idiot.”

The feeling of Artemis’ teeth and tongue at the shell of his ear was enough to steal the next smart words from Jarlaxle’s mouth. His world narrowed to those two points of contact, and he was tensed like a bowstring between them. Or maybe less like a bow and more like a harp, pleasure playing beautiful chords up and down his spine.

Jarlaxle’s nails bit into the headboard’s wood. “Let me touch you,” he begged, words as ragged as his breathing. “Please.”

But Artemis just shushed him gently, and Jarlaxle’s hands stayed where they were.

“Artemis!”

Artemis’ teeth pinched the tip of his ear, and Jarlaxle mewled. “Say my name again.”

“Ah! Artemis!”

“Again.”

“ _Artemis_!”

The harp string snapped, and Jarlaxle’s vision sparked white, the syllables of Artemis’ name choked off in an anguished wail. He panted for breath, reality reasserting itself one sense at a time: touch in the pinpricks of pleasure from the last lingering squeeze of Artemis’ hand, hearing in the sounds of his breathing over the roar of his pulse, then sight.

Jarlaxle opened his eyes to find Artemis watching him closely, and there was that aching look Jarlaxle had spied in the mirror. One could drown in that look. His hands slipped free of the headboard, one to touch Artemis’ stubbled cheek, the other skimming down his side.

“Let me touch you,” he asked again, feeling his clear interest against his hip, but Artemis just shook his head.

It was about control again, still. It was about Artemis willingly making himself vulnerable. Even with the women he’d bedded, Jarlaxle doubted he ever had. So he settled for a kiss, for sliding his fingers through thick hair as dark as his skin, for the light touch of Artemis’ fingers against his side. He let Artemis clean them both up and righted his clothing, surprised when, loose-limbed and languid, he wasn’t kicked out of Artemis’ bed.

“Easier to smother you when you start snoring,” was Entreri’s explanation when he settled back in, next to Jarlaxle.

Jarlaxle hummed in mock agreement as he burrowed against his side, throwing an arm around his waist. “Elves do not snore.”

“I know from experience that at least one does.”

“Clearly you are hearing the echoes of your own snores.” Jarlaxle closed his eyes, settling his cheek against Artemis’ shoulder.

“While I’m awake? That takes skill.”

“Well, you are talented, my friend.” Jarlaxle smiled, feeling Artemis’ chest move with a huff of breath, the sound he made when he was amused but trying to seem long-suffering. Jarlaxle knew the face that went with that sound, and now he knew what it felt like under his hand.

He drifted off, warm and content, wine glasses all but forgotten.

 

Entreri didn’t sleep as easily, unused to the weight and warmth of another body against his. He watched Jarlaxle slip into reverie, eyelashes white against a dark cheek, his expression relaxed, even serene. He remembered the heat in Jarlaxle’s red eye, the way Jarlaxle said his name as he came, the way Jarlaxle’s body writhed under him, and Artemis was careful to burn every part of that moment into his memory. He regretted none of it, but there was still that itching under his skin, a vestigial fight-or-flight response that he knew wasn’t going away all at once but that he was determined to master.

Entreri wasn’t about to tell himself that Jarlaxle wouldn’t hurt him—he knew the drow would—but he was close to convincing himself that Jarlaxle didn’t _want_ to.

Jarlaxle murmured something in his rest, one ear twitching before his breathing rasped in the faintest of snores. Artemis huffed again, that squeezing feeling in his chest swearing with the itching under his skin but balancing it enough to let him sink into an uneasy sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

Jarlaxle woke to a warm body next to his, one that smelled like leather with an earthy musk that made him think of sand and a desert sun. Artemis. Jarlaxle smiled lazily, remembering the previous night, and let his eyes slip closed again, holding close that warm glow in his chest.

After a moment, he realized his friend was not sleeping peacefully. Small sounds caught in his throat, and Jarlaxle could feel his muscles tense and shift. They both had nightmares neither brought up by unspoken agreement, so this was nothing new, but usually Jarlaxle was on the other side of the room.

“Artemis.” He brushed his lips along the corner of Artemis’ jaw, stroked his cheek. “You are dreaming, _abbil_.”

Kimmuriel’s voice came back to him from that night at Gusev’s: _He is dreaming rather loudly_. _That flute will break him if you are not careful._

Jarlaxle looked down and was unsettled but unsurprised to find the flute in Artemis’ white-knuckled grip. He knew Artemis hadn’t gone to sleep holding it and couldn’t begin to understand the magic of the instrument, but he had the distinct feeling that he’d rather not have it in bed with them. He rubbed the fingers of the hand holding the flute, trying to coax them open, and he’d gotten the flute halfway out of his hand when Artemis snapped awake.

Warrior instinct had Jarlaxle rolling out of bed and on his feet before Artemis’ hit could land, and then Artemis was on his feet too, the bed a no-man’s land between them. He held the flute like a dagger, eyes wild, angry, and confused.

“Artemis?” The phrase _poking a sleeping dragon_ came to mind, but Jarlaxle had spent many nights beside an actual sleeping dragon to a less violent effect.

Artemis blinked at Jarlaxle, then down at the flute, looking just as surprised to see it in his hand. “Was this you?” he asked, holding up the instrument. There was a threat in the glare that accompanied the words.

“No,” Jarlaxle answered carefully, eyeing his partner. He wasn’t quite sure what Artemis was asking. “I awakened mere minutes before you. How would—?”

“I don’t mean right now!” Entreri snapped. “The flute! The way it’s affecting…!” He licked his lips, swallowing his next words. He brandished the flute again. “Did you orchestrate this somehow?”

It took a moment for Jarlaxle to work through what Artemis was implying. He rubbed the heel of his hand into his uncovered eye. “Are you implying that I used magic to manipulate you into bed?” He tried to keep the offended edge out of his voice. Artemis lashed out when he was uncomfortable, when he was vulnerable, and Jarlaxle should have known to expect this, _but_ …

“I wouldn’t put it past you!” Entreri snapped, only to wince, holding his empty hand up as though to push those words back. “I… I don’t…”

Warily, Jarlaxle rounded the bed, steps balanced to run or fight if he needed to. “I know you don’t believe that, or I would be incredibly offended. What magic have I ever needed for seduction, besides my natural charm?”

The joke fell flat, and Jarlaxle held out his hand for the flute. Artemis just held it tighter.

“ _Abbil_.”

Jarlaxle laid a hand on his arm, the touch gentle, seeking. When he wasn’t rebuffed, his touch crept higher, over his shoulder, up his neck to touch his face, and Artemis was wound so tight Jarlaxle could feel him trembling. Artemis wasn’t entirely here, he realized, eyes blank, still staring down the nightmares Jarlaxle had tried to wake him from.

This time when Jarlaxle touched his hand, Artemis let him coax the flute out of his grip. He tucked it into an invisible pocket for now, out of reach, and Artemis blinked as though finally seeing him.

“Are you all right?” Jarlaxle asked.

Artemis’ breathing came a little too harsh, a little too quick, for Jarlaxle to believe his answering nod. He held Jarlaxle’s hand to his cheek a moment before pulling away. “I… I need…”

Whatever it was he needed, he didn’t say, pausing only long enough to disarm the traps and undo the locks before slipping out the door. Jarlaxle considered following but held himself back. What he “needed”, Jarlaxle suspected, was space to sort himself out.

“A challenge,” he reminded himself with a sigh.

 

Unlike his dour companion, Jarlaxle did not do well with solitude and silence, so he elected to pay one of the sisters a visit, to see if she had gotten the plans they needed. Sunlight glinting off silver seemed colder somehow than when it glinted off gold, and there were, surprisingly, a few customers today, milling about the shop. Jarlaxle couldn’t recall seeing more than two at a time.

Which just made the original theft that much more embarrassing, really.

Tazmikella noticed him before the door bell started to chime, meeting him at the door. “Where’s your husband?” she asked, glancing at the empty space behind him and startling a laugh out of Jarlaxle.

“Brooding, I suspect. And I would be careful not to call him that to his face.” He shook the snow off his hat before stepping inside.

“Well, I’m not about to call him your _wife_ to his face. Wipe your shoes, please.”

“Of course.” Jarlaxle paused to do just that. “Hold on, are you implying that _I_ am _his_ wife?”

“Is there something wrong with being a wife?” Tazmikella asked with a smile that was all teeth.

“I am drow,” Jarlaxle reminded her. “Being likened to a woman is a compliment.”

“I am not drow, and it still is.”

Jarlaxle capitulated with a bow. He darted a glance at her customers. “I don’t suppose you have had the time to…?”

Tazmikella held up a finger and pulled a roll of parchment out of her sleeve.

“Ah! Many thanks!” Jarlaxle beamed as he reached for the paper, but Tazmikella held it back.

“You owe me a favor,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Not my sister, but me. Two favors if you make me lose my bet.” The twitch of a smile said she might— _might_ —be joking about that last bit.

“When have I ever left a debt unpaid?” Jarlaxle said, hand over his heart. She handed him the parchment. “And depending on the parameters of your bet, you may have already lost.” His eye glittered with mischief as he tipped his hat, catching Tazmikella’s round-eyed look as he slipped out the door, the bell tinkling behind him.

 

Legs dangling from the rooftop, Entreri watched the street below. He counted heads, measured strides, cataloged the best choke point to use against an imagined enemy, and wondered with black humor if this who he would always be: a man keeping an eye on death even when it wasn’t staring him down.

Though the tall building next door blocked the wind, its icicles bled onto the ledge beside him. The cold and damp were inescapable here, and he supposed that was all Damara would be too.

When he spotted a purple hat flouncing down the street, Entreri reflected that it wasn’t just the cold and damp that were inescapable. He’d hoped for a few more minutes’ peace, but the angle of that damnable hat told him he’d been spotted.

Jarlaxle’s cloak caught the wind as he levitated to Entreri’s level. “You would make a fine gargoyle, my _khal abbil_.” His words and smile were gratingly cheerful, but that was Jarlaxle, ever on the edge of “too much”.

This entire week had been too much.

Entreri sighed and turned, dropping back to the roof. He took some satisfaction in the look on Jarlaxle’s face when his graceful levitation ended in sludge.

Jarlaxle caught the edge of his smirk. “So are we finished brooding for the afternoon?”

His smirk shrank.

“Or were you planning on going back to avoiding me?” Jarlaxle stepped close, too close, the way Entreri felt like all his nerves were sitting on the surface, but Entreri didn’t give ground.

And in the back of his mind, Entreri knew he was being unfair, knew Jarlaxle hadn’t deserved his accusations that morning or the silence since, but even now, Jarlaxle’s presence wasn’t unwanted. It was simply Too Much after the night before.

“Why did you have to stay on the surface? Why can’t you just leave me be? Why…?” Entreri trailed off, his voice failing him. He raised his hands as though to wrap them around Jarlaxle’s neck and simply set them on Jarlaxle’s arms instead, huffing weakly at how deceptively delicate the drow felt under his hands, remembering how smooth his skin had been under all the loud fabric. Jarlaxle just stared back at him, unflinching, though Entreri could see the way he was palming a dagger, just in case.

“You have been to Menzoberranzan,” was the infuriating drow’s infuriating answer, said as lightly as though he were discussing the weather. “I imagine the answer to that first question is self-evident.” The dagger slipped out of his hand, and he brought up both hands to cup Artemis’ face. “The second should, at this point, be self-evident too.”

Entreri gripped his arms hard enough to bruise.

“Is it not, my friend?”

“Friend?” Artemis echoed, as though unsure of the word.

“Are we not?” Jarlaxle asked, sounding hurt.

But Artemis put on that shuttered look again, unsure how to answer, unsure what he was even looking for.

Jarlaxle pulled back, looking equally unsure. “Have I done something to offend you?”

Artemis blinked. “What?”

“Well, have I?”

“No more than usual.”

“Then we _are_ still friends?”

Artemis just knit his brow in confusion. “At least, I would think.”

Now Jarlaxle was the one who looked confused. “‘At least’? What would—?” He cut himself off, brows smoothing over in understanding. “Ah.”

Jarlaxle took Artemis’ hand, and Artemis was intimately aware of every inch of skin that touched his, couldn’t help but note the differences between them: brown skin against black, scarred knuckles against long fingers. Artemis couldn’t help but feel rough and unfinished next to him.

“This is, I suspect, a cultural dissonance. In Menzoberranzan, it is not so difficult to find a _mrannd’ssinss_ , a…” Jarlaxle grappled with an adequate translation, though Entreri knew the word. “…a bedmate, but a true friend is, in fact, a rare treasure. We… do not have a term for one who is both, so I choose the word that holds the higher honor for me.” He tilted his head curiously. “What would you call us, then?”

An uncomfortable question. All the obvious answers seemed trite and ridiculous to Artemis’ ears. “Idiots, generally,” he neatly side-stepped, but Jarlaxle laughed.

“ _Ussta vallabha mal’ai_ , then!” he declared. “‘My dearest idiot’. We shall be idiots together then, yes?”

Artemis looked at him incredulously, but Jarlaxle was wearing that smile that made his chest feel tight and his tongue thick in his throat. “Fine, but you’re the bigger idiot.”

“Whom you are sleeping with,” Jarlaxle replied smugly.

“Godsdamn. You’re right. That makes _me_ the bigger idiot.”

“From your lips, _mal’ai_.” Jarlaxle smirked and pressed a kiss to his knuckles that had Artemis rolling his eyes and snatching his hand back. Still, something in the teasing gesture, in the simple banter eased that itching under his skin, that overwrought jangling of nerves.

“Come back inside?” Jarlaxle coaxed. He reached under his cloak and drew out the roll of parchment Tazmikella had gotten for him, waving it in front of Artemis’ face. “I have the plans we need, but I would rather discuss them when we are not both ankle-deep in sludge.”

“Yet more of Damara’s charms,” Entreri grumbled. Jarlaxle bonked him on the nose with the roll of parchment, and Entreri rocked back, blinking before pinning the drow with an annoyed look. Jarlaxle—damn him—just laughed.

“Shall we, _abbil_?” he asked, slipping the parchment back under his cloak and winding an arm around his waist. At Entreri’s suspicious look, he added, “I will levitate us both. You are not climbing through the window with this mess on your boots. That carpet is expensive!”

“That carpet is ugly. I would be doing us a favor.”

“And what would you put in its place? A burial shroud?”

“A drow-skin rug—!” That last word rose in pitch as Jarlaxle pulled them over the edge of the roof. Entreri held onto his shoulders and pointedly did not look down, noticing they were just hovering instead of descending.

Jarlaxle looked askance at him. “Hmm. Perhaps not the best suggestion when I’m the only thing keeping you in the air?”

Entreri glared at him even as he clutched at him, knuckles white where they gripped the fabric of his cloak and vest, and he bit the pointed ear that was right in his face, just to counter that smug look. Jarlaxle’s eye popped wide, and he almost did drop Artemis then, a strangled note of surprise catching in his throat. He descended almost too quickly, and the moment they touched ground, Jarlaxle spun them both and pressed Artemis into the wall of the alley.

“Careful,” Jarlaxle warned, eye dark and voice rough.

Entreri stiffened, but the hands on him didn’t press for more. Suddenly Jarlaxle’s closeness was both too much and not enough. Or maybe it was somewhere in between, and Jarlaxle was waiting for him to indicate just where, exactly, it fell on that scale.

Entreri just smirked. “Why?”

The kiss was harsh, teeth knocking, biting, and Jarlaxle was growling in a way Artemis could feel in his bones. Hands clutched and clawed, bodies pulled close, and Artemis remembered how Jarlaxle had looked and sounded, writhing beneath him, and wanted that again.

A roll had Jarlaxle pinned to the wall instead, the impact knocking the hat back on his head as he clutched at Artemis’ shoulders, and Artemis had to brace himself against the wall when Jarlaxle leaped up, wrapping long legs around his waist. Artemis panted and cursed in his ear, and Jarlaxle took the opportunity to bite his.

“We… we are still outside, you realize,” Artemis said, choking when Jarlaxle’s shifting rubbed their groins together. He could hear his pulse in his ears, could feel it thrumming through his body, heedless of the cold with Jarlaxle’s body pressed against him.

“Your fault,” Jarlaxle growled, punctuating the statement with a short cry as Artemis’ hips ground against his. “Though we… we should maybe reconsider that…” A hand in Artemis’ hair kept his head in place as Jarlaxle panted in his ear. “…since I plan to be quite loud.”

Artemis groaned against his throat, unsure how in the hells he was going to be able to undo their traps in this state. “How is this _my_ fault?” he groused, shivering at the way Jarlaxle nibbled at the corner of his jaw.

“Ear,” Jarlaxle reminded.

“Ass.”

“Yes, my ass _is_ tempting,” Jarlaxle said, words choked around a groan. “I could see how… how it would cause this!”

“I was _calling_ you a—!” Jarlaxle's breathless chuckle said he knew that. Artemis sighed, letting his head drop to Jarlaxle’s shoulder as he held them still, trying to put his thoughts back in the proper order. He felt dizzy, almost drunk, and he wondered how no one had elicited these reactions from him before, wondered with chagrin why it had to be _Jarlaxle_. “Definitely your fault,” he decided when Jarlaxle kept on pressing lazy kisses to his throat and jaw.

Artemis pulled back, and Jarlaxle set his feet back down on the ground with a regretful sigh, still pressing himself distractingly close. Artemis had barely closed the door when Jarlaxle was on him again, not quite pinning him but clearly trembling with the desire to, though Artemis was as much caught off-guard by the hat in his face as the kiss. Even as his lips moved against Jarlaxle’s distractedly, he wondered how Ilnezhara, who was taller than them both, managed to deal with the hat without getting smacked in the eye.

Likely by making him take it off, first. He breathed a wry huff into the kiss, to which Jarlaxle responded with an inquisitive, “mm?” Artemis didn’t bother answering or even breaking the kiss, merely sweeping the hat off Jarlaxle’s head and relishing in the opportunity to fling it across the room. He stilled when he heard something clatter and break, and Jarlaxle finally broke the kiss to burst out laughing.

“Shut up,” Entreri huffed, spinning them again so he had Jarlaxle pinned to the door, something the damned drow appreciated to go by the wicked glint in his uncovered eye. “You try aiming when there’s a tongue in your mouth.”

Jarlaxle hummed, pulling Artemis against him and trying to coax him into another kiss. “Is that a challenge, _mal’ai_?” he purred against his lips, a glint of metal at the corner of Artemis’ eye telling him Jarlaxle had drawn a dagger from his bracer.

Entreri narrowed his eyes at the mischievous look on Jarlaxle’s face and the pointed glance over his shoulder. Entreri followed that look, eyeing the silhouette over his bed. “Plan to stab yourself, is that it?”

“I’d rather _you_ stab me, personally,” Jarlaxle rumbled, a hand in Artemis’ belt tugging his hips closer, and Artemis’ breath hitched when Jarlaxle ground up into him. “But, care to make it interesting?”

“You want me to use the real you as target practice?”

“Wherever I hit on that target of yours, you have to touch on me.” Jarlaxle bit his lip, eyebrows twitching up.

“I’d be happy to caress whichever shoulder you almost hit,” Entreri drawled, and Jarlaxle was still shaking with laughter when he pulled him back down into a kiss.

Artemis settled back into its rhythm, making a soft sound at the teasing scrape of Jarlaxle’s teeth around his tongue. He pressed his weight fully into Jarlaxle, wanting to surround himself in his body’s heat, wanting to burrow into him, wanting to—

He felt the sudden tensing of Jarlaxle’s arm, heard the subtle _thup_ of a dagger sinking home, and pulled free of Jarlaxle’s teeth long enough look over his shoulder. The dagger’s hilt stuck up proudly from the silhouette’s groin, and Artemis stared at it a moment, unsure if that was an indication of Jarlaxle’s skill or an indictment of his.

“ _Really_?”

“I’ve had practice.”

Artemis made a few aborted sounds that never quite made it to a question. “I don’t want to know.”

Jarlaxle arched into him, fingers hooked in Artemis’ belt again. “So are you going to touch my dagger, Artemis?” he purred. “Turn it into a sword?”

“If you make one more sword joke, you can touch your own dagger.”

“No? And here I had all these lines about dueling I’ll never get to use!”

“You are insufferable,” Artemis insisted even as he reached down and squeezed Jarlaxle through his pants.

A breath stuttered out of Jarlaxle instead of another quip when Artemis rolled his palm, and this was familiar, the shape and heat of him under Artemis’ hand, the deepened cadence of his breathing, the lightly parted lips Artemis sank back into. Jarlaxle mewled, arms wrapping around his shoulders as he arched up into Artemis’ hand, breathing growing ragged against his cheek.

Artemis tugged at the hem of Jarlaxle’s shirt. “Off,” he growled into the kiss.

Jarlaxle agreed breathlessly, unclasping his cloak with one hand and throwing it to the side, nearly tangling with Artemis’ hands as he pulled off his vest and his shirt and let them fall to the same fate. They had barely hit the ground by the time Artemis had gotten the laces of Jarlaxle’s pants open.

“Please,” Jarlaxle asked, giving Artemis’ shirt a similar tug, bending to nip the soft skin under Artemis’ jaw.

This was nothing knew, Artemis reminded himself. Or a little new, the expert touch of Jarlaxle’s hands against skin he would have seen countless times. He nodded almost dazedly, that almost-drunk feeling sweeping over him again, and he hardly noticed that Jarlaxle did most of the work of stripping him down to his pants. Then Jarlaxle’s hands were everywhere, lighting a fire under his skin, and Artemis _needed_.

“Please.” And now Artemis was the one begging, though he wasn’t sure for what, the word panted out over Jarlaxle’s neck, murmured again against his ear.

Jarlaxle breathed out something in Drow that sounded like it might be a curse, Artemis too far gone to translate. When those clever fingers plucked at his laces, Artemis let them, breath shivering when Jarlaxle’s hand stroked over him.

“So you really _are_ well-endowed!”

Artemis blinked at the door, trying to process words when the squeeze and slide of Jarlaxle’s hand demanded his attention. When the meaning hit, he huffed and rolled his eyes even as he rocked into Jarlaxle’s touch. “Idiot.”

“Yes, we’ve established this,” Jarlaxle countered, almost affectionately, throwing a leg over Artemis’ hip, the hand around him leaving to grab his ass instead to encourage the roll of his hips. Artemis grunted, unsure of the sensation at first, as Jarlaxle’s erection slid against his, but the desperate moans that spilled from Jarlaxle’s throat were persuasive.

Lifting him up by the ass, Artemis encouraged Jarlaxle to wrap his legs around him again, taking control of the pace as he rolled up into him. And that was good, the slide of skin on skin. More than good, the way the pleasure pooled at the bowl of his hips. He reveled in their differences, in the obsidian skin and pointed ears, the pleasured murmurings in Drow, all reminders of who this was, of whom he was with, a bulwark against the ghosts of memories that wanted to haunt these moments.

The barest scrape of his teeth along a pointed ear had Jarlaxle’s moans and pleas rising in pitch, legs tightening around him as his body writhed, and somewhere in the background, Artemis was aware of the creak of wood, the rattling of the door in its jamb.

Jarlaxle hadn’t been lying about being loud, not when licking the tip of his ear into his mouth had Jarlaxle crying out, the sound undulating in time with each thrust. And Artemis was caught there, in that sound, in that moment, in the burgeoning _need_ that flowed through him like a bone-deep ache.

“Artemis!”

He recognized that quality in Jarlaxle’s voice, that bruising press of fingers in his back, and his grip tightened in answer, holding Jarlaxle close against him as the drow shivered and shuddered, head falling back against the door and lips parting. Artemis buried his face in Jarlaxle’s neck to stopper his own sounds, the pleasure a warm rush down his spine that bordered on too much, but then Jarlaxle was always too much. His rhythm stuttered, stopped then started again, teeth gritted, his every muscle tensed hard enough to tremble, and then lightning flashed behind his eyes and down his spine, his release tearing through him with an almost painful violence.

Feeling returned slowly, his own breaths loud and ragged in his ears, sweat cooling on his back, his front sticky where he was pressed to Jarlaxle. There were fingers on his scalp, rubbing in circles, and lips brushing the soft skin behind his ear, and Artemis should not have found that as soothing as it was.

“This…” Jarlaxle panted, his voice discordantly loud in the sudden silence. “This is where I’d make the joke about dueling.”

Artemis groaned.

 

This time it was Jarlaxle who laid awake while his companion slept, each in their separate beds. Entreri needed the space, he knew, and Jarlaxle didn’t take it personally, even accepted a pillow to the face when he asked if this was because of his jokes. Artemis Entreri was a man used to his autonomy, who wielded his independence like a shield, and he’d run similarly hot and cold when they’d first started traveling—and living—together. He’d even out eventually, once he was used to the change.

Which was a funny thought, Jarlaxle supposed. “Eventually”. He twirled the flute over in his hands, long fingers playing over the holes, softly blowing air through the wood, just hard enough to hear it moving but not loud enough to sound a note. As he played, he wondered when he had started thinking of Artemis in a semi-permanent manner, but he supposed he had been for a while.

This partnership of theirs was working, after all, and that it included sex now made it all the better. And if they each had their own escape contingencies, whether in a psionicist or in a dimensional pocket in a glove, well. They were both being reasonably cautious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out it's impossible to describe someone playing the flute without it sounding dirty. As a former flutist, I find this distressing.


	14. Chapter 14

Dragons and tunnels—two things he had seen precious little of before meeting Jarlaxle that he saw too much of now. At least he didn’t have to deal with them at the same time, he supposed, but that didn’t make the eye-watering stench of the sewers any easier to breathe. The pipes were wide but more poorly ventilated than most, and Entreri had to pull a fold of his cloak over his nose and mouth to keep from getting dizzy. He only prayed that Lorica wasn’t stupid enough to light a torch down here or this would be a much shorter mission than anticipated.

“Left,” Jarlaxle instructed, peering at the sewer plans Tazmikella had gotten him. The cloth tied over his mouth muffled and garbled the word, and Artemis was almost surprised that Jarlaxle didn’t have a magical item for this. Or maybe he did but didn’t want to waste it. That seemed more likely.

“This woman is really not worth the 1000 gold,” Entreri grumbled.

“5000,” Jarlaxle corrected. “Apparently she sent a threat directly to King Gareth.”

Entreri felt something squish under his boot but didn’t dare look down to see what it was. “Not worth that either.”

“Foolish, really,” Jarlaxle went on, and Entreri envied his ability to levitate over the worst of the filth. He nudged Entreri down another bend. “She would have had the element of surprise. Or… well.” He tipped his head back and forth. “Without Brien warning us, anyway, and as far as we know, she knows nothing of that.”

“Suicidal,” Entreri reminded him. “That was the adjective of choice.” He wondered what that made them, chasing after her in a dark, flammable tunnel with no easy way out, trying to stop her from collapsing a castle full of people he really didn’t care about. “Foolish is what _we_ are.”

“My _khal mal’ai_ ,” Jarlaxle said, tilting his head and batting his eyelashes at Artemis. “I will bring you somewhere more romantic after this.”

“I thought I was the one doing the wooing?”

“Right. Then _you_ will bring _me_ somewhere more romantic after this.”

Entreri rolled his eyes but reflected that he’d set the bar low. Then he wondered when “romantic” had become a part of their vocabulary, let alone a part of their relationship… whatever that happened to be now. Just the word made him feel like he needed a bath more than whatever he had just stepped in.

“Is this not romantic enough for you?” Entreri replied, gesturing around at the filth they picked their way through. “Shall I light some candles?”

Jarlaxle barked a laugh. “Then suicidal would be the adjective for us, I would think. But, maybe some wine? Adding wine can make anything a party.”

“I don’t like parties.”

“And I don’t like sewers, yet here we are.”

Entreri scoffed, shooting the drow an incredulous look. The passage ahead had been closed off, sewage still leaking under the metal. “That is not the same thing! _I_ don’t like sewers, either!”

Jarlaxle pulled the black disc out of his hat, twirled it around his finger a few times, and threw it at the wall, creating an opening. “In fairness, are there any places you do like, _abbil_?”

Entreri stepped through the opening, throwing him a sour look over his shoulder, and Jarlaxle reflected on the trust in that, stepping through and believing—knowing—he would follow. “Calimshan. Warm. No snow.”

“Scorching,” Jarlaxle corrected. “With a blinding sun.”

“Good food,” Entreri went on.

“Murder by spices.”

That coaxed a smirk out of Artemis. The drow’s sensitive palette had been the source of much amusement when Bregan D’aerthe had first come to Calimport. Watching Jarlaxle try to comport himself with dignity while wheezing through a plate of curry had been one of the first times Artemis had seen him as… human, for lack of a better term.

Even under a fold of fabric, Jarlaxle caught that smirk in the crinkling of skin around his eyes. “You enjoy my suffering.”

“Considering how much suffering you put me through on a regular basis, yes. It only seems fair.”

Jarlaxle gave his body an exaggerated once-over. “Are you sure ‘suffering’ is the word?”

“Yes.”

Jarlaxle laughed. “Then you and I have a very different idea of its meaning, _mal’ai_.”

“Oh?” Artemis drawled. “Traipsing through the sewers is your idea of a good time, then?”

“If there was wine, it would be.”

Entreri was about to point out that Jarlaxle carried four different kinds of wine in his hat at all times, when the drow shushed him, his ears pricked up and holding very still. There was a _plunk_ , the sound of a stone dropping into water, then another farther away. Entreri squinted into the dark, but no shapes stood out to him. He glanced at Jarlaxle.

 _Probably nothing_ , he signed.

 _Famous last words_ , Jarlaxle replied with a wry look.

They kept their conversation to drow hand code after that. Eventually the tunnel widened into a cavernous chamber, the sewer water waist-deep, and Entreri was grateful for the walkways that skirted the edges.

 _Not even wine would salvage this_ , Entreri signed to Jarlaxle, earning an amused huff in reply.

Jarlaxle tapped Entreri’s arm and pointed, and Entreri followed the line of his finger to the soft glow of light at the far end of the chamber, lighting the dirty water from below. The way the filth sat on the water made it look like there were shapes moving in the dark.

 _Light spell_ , Jarlaxle signed. _On a stone, perhaps._

Probably what they had heard, which meant Lorica was nearby.

Jarlaxle tucked away the sewer plans and pointed again, this time to the far tunnel up ahead. _The way to under Gareth’s castle._

Entreri nodded, slipping his dagger out of its sheath.

“Is the gold worth so much to you?” Lorica asked, her voice right behind them, and Entreri spun, body reacting before his brain had caught up to the words, only to find nothing behind him. Jarlaxle had spun with him, ears pricking.

“Can you not just leave me be?” Then her voice was above them. Again Entreri looked, and again he saw nothing.

Jarlaxle signed for him to continue for the tunnel, though Entreri noted the barest tensing in his muscles that said he was preparing for an attack.

“My dearest lady,” Jarlaxle addressed the room at large, creeping along the walkway and pulling a dagger into his palm, “you threatened the king!”

“And he matters that much to you, drow?” There was an odd note to her voice, something sharp that bounced off the walls. “Believe me, you matter very little to him.”

“His loss, but I don’t plan to kill him over it. And yes, the gold is rather nice.”

Entreri wasn’t sure if a simple cleric should be able to do that, to throw her voice so convincingly. _Likely possessed by a demon,_ Jarlaxle had told him. She was more than just a cleric.

“So this is a political move?” Entreri asked, stepping ahead of Jarlaxle, a hand on Charon’s Claw. “A condemnation for Gareth not caring for his subjects? A bit hypocritical, considering the number of those you murdered in your little lightning spree.”

Entreri didn’t care much for hypocrites, possessed or not.

“I…” And this time Lorica’s voice echoed like a human’s should, from the lip of the tunnel Entreri was already creeping towards. “A necessary sacrifice, in Talos’ name.”

“It’s not Talos whose voice you hear, Lorica,” Jarlaxle said. Still trying to reason, and Entreri had to shake his head at that.

“ _Don’t kill her_ ,” Brien had pleaded back in Ilnezhara’s shop.

Artemis Entreri had not made that promise.

“Right now the only voice I’m hearing is yours,” Lorica shot back. Then, right in Jarlaxle’s ear, “I will soon change that.”

Entreri had just rounded the lip of the tunnel when a shield came at his face. It was too wide to dodge except in one direction, and Entreri spun into the water to avoid the hit while Jarlaxle simply jumped, levitating over her head.

“Consider me the voice of reason,” Jarlaxle called down to her, but she had spun back into the tunnel and out of sight.

“She must not have liked what she heard,” Entreri quipped as Jarlaxle descended, alighting on the walkway. Something else spilled out of the tunnel to greet them, and Entreri caught only the pale flash of bone before Charon’s Claw swung through the air, cleaving effortlessly through the thighbones of the first skeleton Lorica had summoned.

“Surely you can do better?” Jarlaxle called out as one of his swords sent the other skeleton’s head flying.

The first skeleton sat up on its pelvis, still clawing at Jarlaxle’s legs. A stomp of his boot caved in its skull, and it stopped thrashing.

“Famous last words,” Entreri drawled, nudging the twice-dead skeletons off the ledge into the water to give himself room, and Jarlaxle chuckled as he turned down the tunnel after Lorica.

Entreri had just started to pull himself up onto the walkway to join him when something wrapped around his ankle. “Jar—!” was all he was able to call out before that something _pulled_ , the rest of Jarlaxle’s name gargled in sewer water.

 

Jarlaxle heard half his name and a violent splash and wheeled about to find his partner thrashing in the water. “Artemis?” He started towards him, only to pull himself up short, the glow of the light spell illuminating the edges of the sea creature rearing its head. Or rearing its… whatever-it-was, a bulbous mass with a sucking mouth and flapping tentacles. Jarlaxle wondered how they could have missed it, until he looked closer, spotting the chunks taken out of the tentacle nearest him, sewer filth mixing with what he assumed was the stink of decay.

Not just a sea creature. An _undead_ sea creature.

“You did better,” he said in a weak voice before bursting into action, throwing daggers at its bulbous center as he ran along the ledge, half-chewed tentacles reaching for him but not catching him.

There was the flash of a red blade out of the corner of his eye, and the gasping, choking coughs of his companion came as a relief. “Are you all right, Artemis?” he called out without looking. A dagger took off a tentacle that had been holding on by a thread, and the creature didn’t so much as react. The coughs turned back to gurgles, and finally Jarlaxle did look. “Artemis?”

The momentary distraction nearly cost him, and Jarlaxle just barely managed to bring a dagger across to slice at the tentacle trying to wrap around his waist. He jumped and levitated, kicking off the wall to send him flying across the room, ending the spell just as he came up over the monster. He dropped between tentacles, flicking his daggers into swords, and stabbed through the flesh beneath him, hoping his blades were hitting something important. The creature let out an otherworldly wail, one that ended in a death rattle, tentacles flopping and twitching before they dropped under the water.

Jarlaxle couldn’t activate his levitation in time to avoid slipping into the muck as the creature’s twice-dead body rolled, but he was able to jump off into the water closest to where he’d last seen Artemis.

No sooner had he landed than Entreri resurfaced—or at least his head did, his gasp for breath holding a disturbing rattle as he clawed at the rotted tentacle still wrapped around his neck.

Jarlaxle tucked his daggers away again as he waded over to him, propping his shoulders with his thighs as he reached out to help. “Hold still!” he demanded, slapping aside Entreri’s hands when they tangled with his. Entreri coughed up filthy water as he unwound the thing, tossing it to land limply back in the water. “Still alive, _abbil_?”

Entreri took a moment to wheeze, tossing a glare at Jarlaxle even as he leaned back against him. “Unfortunately.”

He sounded rough, and when Jarlaxle pulled his hands away again, it was to see livid bruising already appearing around his throat. He picked Artemis up by the armpits, pulling him to his feet and steadying him.

“We cannot underestimate this woman,” Jarlaxle said as he helped Artemis retrieve his weapons.

“If she turns out to be a dragon too, note that this is where I’ll be burying your corpse.”

Jarlaxle laughed, reaching to help Artemis back onto the walkway, but the man brushed off his hands and climbed up himself.

“We need to hurry,” Entreri said, and Jarlaxle couldn’t tell if it was the near-strangulation or his mood that made the words come out in a growl.

“But cautiously,” Jarlaxle reminded him even as he let Entreri take the lead. “She has a head start and knows how to use her environment to her advantage.”

Entreri “hrmm’d”, thinking of the mining tunnel, of Jarlaxle crushed under the weight of debris. She _did_ know how to use her environment to her advantage.

But so did Artemis Entreri.

He kept an eye out for traps as they made their way forward, faster than was cautious, slower than he would like, but he suspected Brien had been the trap-maker of the two.

He also suspected that was Brien’s voice he heard, echoing back to them from the tunnel and overlaid with hers, a shouting match distorted by the bounce of sound off stone.

“Took him long enough,” Entreri grumbled, holding up a wet sleeve against the fumes and trying not to think about the smell.

“Dimensional Door is not an exact science,” Jarlaxle reminded him. Now, at least, there was a chance they could end this peacefully.

They found the arguing pair at a fork in the tunnels, the space not quite wide enough for another one of those beasts, but Entreri eyed the water just the same. Brien blocked Lorica’s route, hands up and palm out in a gesture of peace, Lorica’s knuckles white where she gripped her mace in a gesture of rage.

Entreri took his sleeve from his face long enough to find the air surprisingly clean, but then he’d heard of spells that could clear the air, if only for a few moments. He’d enjoy it while it lasted.

“And you expect me to listen?” Lorica snapped, her accent thicker than they were used to hearing. “After you abandoned me? After you _betrayed_ me?”

“I didn’t _betray_ you!” Brien shouted back, voice taking on an exasperated pitch.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Jarlaxle asked in an aside to Entreri.

Entreri gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t think they’re lovers.”

“No?”

“She’s old enough to be his mother!”

Entreri felt Jarlaxle’s stare on him and turned to see amusement glimmering in his one red eye. Entreri considered his words, considered that Jarlaxle was old enough to be his father ten times over, and decided that that was a thought he never wanted to have again.

“No?” Lorica pointed her mace sharply back at Entreri and Jarlaxle, and Entreri sucked in a breath when it crackled with lightning. “Then what do you call sending bounty hunters after me?”

“Jarlaxle,” he said, voice tight, “how long does Zone of Sweet Air typically last?”

“Not long enough to be having this discussion,” Jarlaxle replied, already darting for her.

Lorica whirled, bringing her shield around to smash Jarlaxle’s face, but he ducked into a skid, sliding under her shield and through her legs, and leaping to his feet behind her, daggers flying to distract her as Entreri came at her from the other side.

Already Entreri could smell the difference, the zone shrinking, and he knew he wouldn’t get the mace from Lorica in time. “Get in the water!” he barked at Jarlaxle, even as he grappled with her, reaching for her mace with his gauntleted fist.

Jarlaxle grabbed Brien and dived, and Entreri caught the mace in his hand a moment after the lightning sparked and the tunnel filled with flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am just so grateful for the opportunity to write about tentacles and sewer explosions in one chapter.


	15. Chapter 15

Eyes screwed shut against the dirty water, Jarlaxle didn’t see the way light filled and consumed the tunnel, but he imagined he could feel the rush of heat as flames licked through the air. He only stayed under for a few seconds, knowing explosions like these to burn quick, knowing his bracelet would dampen the damage from any lingering fire anyway. They were a long few seconds, however, as he feared the worst for his friend, for his… for Artemis.

Jarlaxle rose up with a gasp of air, letting Brien up when air was all he found. He found Lorica dazed but unharmed, her shield bobbing in the water and Artemis kneeling on her back, tying her hands behind her.

The man’s skin was reddened but miraculously unburned. Catching his eye, Entreri threw off his singed cloak, and Jarlaxle stared at him in relief and amazement. He could imagine the mace’s enchantment had lasted just long enough to protect Lorica, but…

“You are unharmed?” Jarlaxle asked, keeping the disbelief out of his tone. Entreri was full of surprises.

“But not unannoyed,” Entreri grumbled, finishing his knot as Jarlaxle waded over to his side, looking him over carefully.

Artemis noted the look and drew off his glove in explanation, holding up his hand, and Jarlaxle spotted a new ring next to the protection against cold, a gold band with a red stone. A familiar ring, once he got a closer look at it. The ring Ilnezhara had been trying to sell. The ring he’d been trying to get Artemis to buy for _him_.

“You—!” Jarlaxle wasn’t sure if he should be offended or amused that Artemis had bought the damned ring for himself.

“With how often you put me in front of dragons, do you really think I wouldn’t be prepared for a little fire?”

Jarlaxle opened and closed his mouth and just laughed helplessly.

Brien waded over to them, gagging and spitting and looking a little green in the face. “I think some of that went up my nose.” He sighed when he saw Lorica, shoulders sagging in either regret or relief. Maybe both.

Jarlaxle was just starting to cast about for his hat when he felt it flop wetly onto his head, making an uncomfortable squelching sound. He shot Artemis a mildly annoyed look, but it didn’t hold, not when he spotted the amusement in his eyes.

“Shall we conclude our business in the sewers,” Entreri asked, the curl of his lip only hinting at his distaste, “or would you like to search for buried treasure?”

Jarlaxle smirked. “I think I could use a change of scenery.”

 

A flick of a teleportation wand brought them to the appointed meeting place, the back room of Ilnezhara’s shop. Golden wares peered out at them from wooden crates and a layer of dust, a trove of treasure that didn’t even hint at the dragon’s true hoard. Tied to a chair, Lorica was less a beaten enemy and more a boiling pot, her anger a quiet, simmering thing that rose like steam from her eyes.

She was filthy. They were all filthy, dripping sewer water onto Ilnezhara’s floor, and the thin line of Ilnezhara’s lips said just how much she appreciated that.

“My poor hat,” Jarlaxle sighed, trying to wring the sewer water from its brim. Ilnezhara’s lips pressed thinner still, while at her side, Tazmikella merely looked amused.

“Don’t you have a wand or something for that?” Entreri asked. He cleared his throat, voice still raw from being strangled earlier.

“Ah yes!” Jarlaxle said, brightening as though it hadn’t occurred to him. He reached into his sodden hat and pulled out a sleek black wand. One wave, and all his clothing looked laundered and pressed, even his skin glowing as though freshly scrubbed. Jarlaxle wiped an invisible speck of dust off his hat and set it back on his head with a beaming smile, the picture of cleanliness.

Entreri just considered his own sopping wet and stinking self and sighed.

“You need a bath,” Jarlaxle informed him unhelpfully.

Entreri just glared.

“There better be more charges in that wand, Jarlaxle,” said Ilnezhara, a not-quite-human growl underlaying her words, “or I will be kicking the three smelly humans out into the snow for you to deal with on your own.”

Entreri shot her an incredulous look she promptly ignored. Jarlaxle tutted but relented.

“Hold still, _abbil_ ,” he said to Artemis. He flicked his wrist, and it was a strange feeling, the rush of magic over his skin, tingling like electricity down to his fingertips. But in its wake came a relaxed warmth, like he had been soaking in a bath, pressed and clean, his clothing dry, even his teeth scrubbed, mouth smelling like mint—and thank the gods for that, after his “swim” in the sewers.

Brien and Lorica received the same treatment, in that order, but Lorica’s glare didn’t soften, merely narrowed its focus. Brien hovered at her side, but Lorica wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t even acknowledge his existence. While rage simmered in her eyes, guilt floundered in his, but he didn’t move from her side.

“Are you sure you know how to do this?” he asked Ilnezhara as she approached them, the first, empty idol in hand.

She gave him a look of pure condescension. He wisely did not ask again.

The idol caught Lorica’s attention and held it as Ilnezhara set it on the floor in front of her. “What is this?” Lorica asked through her teeth.

“Don’t you recognize it?” Tazmikella drawled, stepping forward so that she and her sister flanked the statue. “After going through all that trouble trying to steal it?”

“Not the idol!” Lorica hissed, chair rocking as she squirmed. Entreri steadied her with a hand on her shoulder, his grip just this side of too tight. In his other hand was her mace, and she stilled, meeting his glare with her own before turning her attention back to Ilnezhara. “What are you doing?”

Her voice had that sharp quality that made her sound more inhuman than the dragons in the room, and Entreri wondered if she would be snarling half as much if she were aware of their true nature.

The sisters exchanged a look. “Why, putting you back, of course,” Tazmikella said, as though that should be perfectly obvious. “Entreri, my dear, if you value keeping your hand attached to your body, I recommend taking a step back.”

“What do you mean ‘putting me back’?” Lorica asked, fear making her voice rise in pitch as Brien took a few steps away.

There wasn’t much space for Entreri to step, the storeroom already awkwardly small for the six bodies crammed into it, but Jarlaxle chuckled and took hold of his elbow, tugging Entreri back behind the sisters with him. He casually looped one arm through Artemis’, but for all his insouciant posturing, Entreri could see his fingers cupping the teleportation wand up his sleeve.

Ready, in case this went wrong.

Over her sister’s shoulder, Tazmikella watched them, making note of Artemis’ reaction to Jarlaxle’s proximity, most likely. Or lack of reaction, really. Jarlaxle offered her a wink.

The sisters had advised them not to look directly at the idol as they spun their magic around it, and Entreri watched Brien instead, watched the sinister red light wash out his pale face. Worry cast shadows along his brow, and for all that the boy had shown little concern for the townspeople whose lives they’d ruined, he watched Lorica like she was his reason for breathing, watched her until he couldn’t, eyes tearing and squinting into the light.

Jarlaxle had his hat folded down over his eyes. Out of the corner of his, Entreri could see the sisters moving, arms weaving in a delicate dance, could see Lorica thrashing. Under the sound of the spell came the thunk and scrape of chair legs against the floor, a guttural screech nearly drowning out the sisters.

Then the light disappeared, leaving Entreri blinking back spots, and all noise stopped.

“Lorica?” Brien prodded, voice thin.

On the floor, smoke rose from the idol, its eyes a simmering red, while Lorica sat slumped like a doll, the rope the only thing keeping her upright. Ilnezhara scooped up the statue, waving away the smoke.

She laid a hand on Jarlaxle’s arm. “Do mop up before you leave.” And she and her sister swept back into the front of the store.

“Lorica…” Brien was murmuring her name as he crouched in front of her. He brushed back the hair that had fallen from her eyes.

“Still don’t think they’re lovers?” Jarlaxle asked Artemis in Drow, leaning his weight into his friend.

Entreri still wasn’t quite used to all the casual touching, but he didn’t pull away. “No. But I’m beginning to suspect he wants them to be.”

With a weak groan, Lorica opened her eyes. She looked tired, lost, her gaze roving around her without landing on anything.

“Lorica?” Brien prompted, grasping her hand.

Her dead-eyed stare finally landed on his face. “He’s gone,” she said, her voice too flat to read. “I’m… I can’t hear him anymore. Talos?” She raised her voice and her eyes towards the ceiling.

“Talos was never there to begin with,” Entreri grumbled, earning him a sharp look from Brien.

Jarlaxle squeezed his arm before pulling away, boots clomping on the floorboards as he sidled up to them. Brien tensed when Jarlaxle drew out a dagger, but the drow merely smiled and used it to saw open the rope, which pooled about Lorica’s waist.

“My darling Lorica,” Jarlaxle said as he brushed aside the bits of rope, which she made no move to discard, “we believe you were possessed by a demon. A clever one, certainly, that preyed upon your fears and desires and manipulated you towards its own ends.”

“Demon,” Lorica repeated absently, gaze dropping to land on nothing.

“Demons too thrive on chaos,” Jarlaxle said, nodding. “It saw your pain, made you believe it was Talos helping you get retribution.”

Entreri braced himself for the anger, for the flood of denial, but Lorica just sagged, looking ten years older in the space of a blink. She must have known then, on some level.

“Then I am still no one,” she murmured.

“So’s everyone else,” Entreri groused. He waited for the glare, but that didn’t come either.

“We’ll find another purpose,” Brien assured her, and she stared at him as though trying to decide if she believed him.

Still holding her hand, Brien looked up at Entreri, at Jarlaxle. “Thank you.”

“So how do you plan to pay us?” Jarlaxle asked, perfectly amicable.

Brien blinked as though he’d been struck between the eyes. “P… pay you?”

“Well, yes,” Jarlaxle said with the barest laugh. “We’re mercenaries. You didn’t think we were doing this out of the goodness of our hearts, do you?”

“B-but… the other idol…”

“Which you gave to Ilnezhara, yes,” Jarlaxle prompted.

“And which she gave to you,” Brien insisted, voice regaining some of its confidence.

Jarlaxle’s smile was all teeth. “Yes, _she_ gave it to us, not you. Unless of course that’s your way of saying that was you paying us, in which case it’s Ilnezhara that you owe, and I have to tell you…” Jarlaxle hissed through his teeth. “…my debts are much more easily paid. Isn’t that right, Artemis?”

Entreri leaned casually back against the wall. “I did have my heart set on that bounty money. Thought I might buy myself something nice.” He looked right at Jarlaxle as he scratched his jaw, making sure to flash the ring Jarlaxle had wanted for himself.

Jarlaxle shot him an offended look that just made Entreri smile.

Brien looked back and forth between them with the darting-eyed look of a caged animal, only to look again at Lorica and sigh. “Very well,” he said haltingly. “What… do you want, then?”

Jarlaxle beamed, clapping him on the shoulder. “Now that, my dear Brien, is exactly the question you should be asking.”

 

“You seem rather pleased with yourself,” Entreri said a short time later, still leaning against the wall as Jarlaxle straightened up the storeroom.

“I am always pleased with myself,” Jarlaxle countered, fishing about for a mop. “What about me is not pleasing?”

Brien had led Lorica out of the shop under a borrowed illusion—“Another favor,” Jarlaxle had cheerfully pointed out—with the ominous promise that Bregan D’aerthe would “be in touch”. The boy had looked appropriately rattled, the look putting Entreri in mind of Piter, the poor baker who had gotten roped into something larger than himself simply because Jarlaxle had seen some talent in him.

…or perhaps it wasn’t Piter Entreri was reminded of.

Jarlaxle huffed, bending to shove aside a crate and pausing to sneak a peak inside. Artemis found his eyes tracing the curve of his ass.

“Are you going to help?” Jarlaxle asked, peering over his shoulder. Entreri’s gaze snapped back up to his eye. “Or are you just going to stare at my ass all day?”

Entreri’s lips curled in a smirk. “Yes.”

Jarlaxle gave him a mildly scolding look.

“I know your wand works on these kinds of messes too,” Entreri said, not budging from the wall.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. A little hard work never hurt anyone!”

“Then you enjoy your mopping.”

“While you enjoy your moping?”

Entreri glowered but didn’t rise to the bait. “No one enjoys moping.”

“No? And here I thought you had made it into a hobby.”

“Stabbing insolent drow is my hobby,” Entreri drawled.

“With which ‘weapon’, I wonder?” Jarlaxle straightened, raking his eyes over Artemis’ body and pausing meaningfully at his crotch. He smirked when that made Artemis squirm. “Because being stabbed happens to be a hobby of _mine_.”

He approached as he spoke, a bit of a swagger in his steps, and Entreri wanted to hate the confidence in that, the way he moved, knowing he had Artemis’ attention. The implication in his words was… distracting and unsettling.

“Not that weapon,” was the best answer Artemis could manage, starting to move away only for Jarlaxle to pin him to the wall with a hand on his chest. “Jar…” The rest of his name was lost in Jarlaxle’s lips.

Artemis had never much enjoyed kissing before, but Jarlaxle had turned it into an artform, and Artemis had to wonder if this was due to centuries of experience or because he was just insufferably good at it. He hated how easily he melted into it, hated how quickly Jarlaxle could put heat under his skin, hated that the drow was doing this to him in what was, for all intents and purposes, in public.

“You still need to mop,” Entreri said against his lips just to grab a moment of clarity for himself.

“Do I?” Jarlaxle pressed the rest of his body along the length of Artemis’, lips moving to his throat instead, and Artemis kept waiting for the panic, for the anger, for the need to push him away. Instead he found himself wrapping his arms around Jarlaxle, pulling the heat of his body close. “We could, perhaps, make more of a mess, first.”

Artemis hissed and winced when Jarlaxle’s teeth met the bruise on his neck, and Jarlaxle paused at the sound, humming as he reached up a finger to trace the ring of bruises. “I don’t fancy being eaten by a dragon,” Artemis muttered, brushing that finger away.

“Oh, it’s not as terrible as all that.”

Artemis made a face.

“I could have her show you what I mean, if you like.” Jarlaxle’s eye glittered with amusement while Entreri narrowed both of his.

“There is no word strong enough to express my revulsion,” he drawled, a hand on Jarlaxle’s chest nudging him back, “so I will have to settle for ‘no’.”

Jarlaxle pouted but took a step back obligingly. “You still have no imagination.”

“I have plenty of imagination. It’s what I’m imagining that’s the problem.”

“Do you want to know what _I’m_ imagining?” Jarlaxle asked in a purr, twining the laces of Entreri’s shirt around his fingers.

Entreri only managed to look unaffected. “A spotless storeroom that doesn’t smell like sewage? Because that’s the fantasy _I’m_ interested in.” He plucked up the mop leaning against the shelf next to him, pushed the handle into Jarlaxle’s chest, and left Jarlaxle alone in the storeroom with a parting smirk.

The store was closed for the night, the idol’s red glow eclipsing the delicate lanternlight, and Entreri stepped out to find Ilnezhara lowering the idol into a gold-lined chest. The lid swallowed its glow.

“Not pawning it off on your sister this time?” he asked.

Ilnezhara smiled, locking the chest and slipping the key into her pocket. “Of course not. Soul Gems are worth their weight in gold and then some.”

She had that look, that same self-satisfied smile that Jarlaxle had mastered. “Then why give one to Jarlaxle?”

“It was not a gift,” Ilnezhara assured him, and Entreri had to wonder what price Jarlaxle had or would pay for it. “And I knew I would be getting this one.”

“Seems like this worked out rather well for you.”

Ilnezhara met his stare with that smile. “It often does.”

Jarlaxle swept out of the storeroom, fanning his face with his hat dramatically, and opened his mouth as though to proclaim something, only to realize he’d walked into a staring contest. He let his mouth fall shut and slid the hat back onto his head, looking back and forth between the two.

“Why did you leave the idol in the window in the first place?” Entreri pressed. “As you said, it is not like your usual wares and certainly not the sort of thing you would have prominently displayed.”

Jarlaxle tilted his head curiously, picking up Entreri’s train of thought. “Did you know who Lorica was? Her connection to the idol?”

“Oh, I knew who she was the moment she came into the city,” Ilnezhara said.

“And you orchestrated this to get the soul back in the gem?” Entreri asked, his tone a shade below accusing.

Ilnezhara laughed. “Oh, hardly. I just left the idol in the window to see what she would do.”

“You… _tempted_ her into stealing from you?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “It really is too ugly for the shop, and things were getting dreadfully dull around here.” A grin spread across her red lips. “Though had I realized the effect the flute was having, I would have considered that entertainment enough.”

Entreri’s look darkened into a scowl, the heat rising to his face.

“You took my hat,” Jarlaxle said, almost petulantly.

“And I gave it back! As I recall, your payment was well worth the inconvenience.”

Entreri considered the other Soul Gem and the acquisition of, at the very least, a new wand-maker and a talented cleric, should she recover. “Yes, it all worked out rather well for you, too,” he said to Jarlaxle.

“But not for Artemis Entreri?” Ilnezhara pressed, sauntering over to them, and Entreri suspected he was being mocked.

“I didn’t get a Soul Gem.”

“And you ended up with nothing else of value, did you?” She arched an eyebrow, raising his hackles as she encroached upon his personal space. He watched her stiffly but didn’t move and certainly didn’t glance at Jarlaxle, noting the heavy suggestion in her question.

“I suppose the mace is nice,” he drawled, bouncing Lorica’s mace on his shoulder.

Jarlaxle laughed, working his way between them, sliding an arm around Entreri’s shoulders and another around Ilnezhara’s waist. Entreri didn’t bother keeping the irritation off his face. Even if one of them was Jarlaxle, this was too many people standing too close.

“I would say it worked out for all of us!” Jarlaxle declared, his cheerfulness grating. “Though in all seriousness, Ilnezhara, I request that, in the future, you do not touch my hat.”

“No?” Ilnezhara reached up and gave his hat a playful tweak. Jarlaxle responded with a look that was mildly scolding. “Of course. You would rather I touch something else.”

Artemis watched Jarlaxle with Ilnezhara, their easy intimacy, and felt… something. Jealousy? No. Artemis wasn’t about to put limitations on Jarlaxle, like he had any sort of claim on him, especially not when he still wasn’t sure what he’d be giving in exchange. Artemis was aware of his own limitations, after all, and doubted that whatever this nameless thing was between them would be enough for Jarlaxle.

Envy, then. Envy of their ease with each other’s space. At least envy was a familiar poison.

Yet when he saw Ilnezhara’s arm move, Artemis contradicted himself entirely by intercepting her hand en route to Jarlaxle’s ass, grip tight on her wrist. He gave her a warning look over Jarlaxle’s hat, and the dragon had the gall to look amused.

Jarlaxle could sense the movement behind him and anyone within the city could feel the ice in Entreri’s look, but by the time he’d looked over his shoulder to see what they were doing, Ilnezhara had pulled away.

“Now, if you two are quite finished,” she said, the tail of her gown gliding against the floor as she returned to the gold-lined chest, picking it up and tucking it under her arm, “I would like to finish closing up my shop.”

She shooed them on with a wave of her hand, and Entreri didn’t need to be told twice, the bell clattering as he pushed his way out into the street. Jarlaxle had started to follow him when Ilnezhara’s voice called him back.

“I take it I have won my bet?”

With one hand on the door, Jarlaxle turned back with a grin, tipping his hat in answer. “Honestly, I am offended that you doubted me.”

“Neither of us doubted your ability to charm someone into bed.”

“Is that not what I did?” Jarlaxle asked, his smile never faltering.

Ilnezhara barked out a laugh. “If that’s all you think you did,” she replied, “perhaps it is Jarlaxle’s turn to learn the flute.”

She shooed him off again, leaving Jarlaxle to puzzle out her meaning on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I 'wrote' half this chapter while sitting in heavy traffic by narrating it into a voice recording app. Using a strange accent, for some reason. I have no idea why.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~why are sex scenes so awkward to write h'omg~~

Their boots cut a path through the sludge, and Jarlaxle was hovering again, frowning as he tugged at the collar of Entreri’s shirt.

“Stop fussing,” Entreri grumbled, swatting Jarlaxle’s hand away. He was aware of the bruises on his throat without having them prodded.

Jarlaxle tutted, eyeing the purpling rings of bruises around Artemis’ neck, the imprint of tentacle suckers clear on his skin. “It’s a wonder you can talk, really. That beast did a number on you.” As he spoke, he rummaged in his hat until he pulled out a potion.

“Looks that terrible, does it?” Entreri rasped, taking the vial and recognizing the clean smell of a healing potion. A strong one, to go by the deep blue color.

“It looks like you have made love to an octopus.”

“I suppose I’ve called you worse things.” Entreri quaffed the potion, feeling it cool the swollen ache in his throat. He stilled then, still holding the vial in the air, as he realized he’d just implied that they…

But Jarlaxle simply chuckled, taking the empty vial and tossing it back into his hat. “I fear I only have the one tentacle, and while it is a respectable size, it is not quite garrote length.”

“Now, see,” said Entreri, his voice regaining its former strength, “if you had been the one strangled by the tentacle monster, your throat would have been too sore to speak, and I wouldn’t have had to hear that.”

“Well, it’s not too late for you to choke me with _your_ tentacle, Artemis.”

“Or that.”

“Come now!” Jarlaxle said, slipping an arm around his shoulders again. “I would say ‘don’t be so gloomy’, but I’m beginning to suspect that’s just your face. Shall we go celebrate? Have a few drinks? See what new adventure awaits us?”

Artemis considered it as he looked up at the cloudless sky, breath misting in the air. He considered a lot of things, too many things, considered Jarlaxle’s arm around his shoulders, Jarlaxle’s smile on his face, considered the empty streets and empty sky and considered it almost peaceful. The air wasn’t cold where Jarlaxle was pressed against him, and if Artemis were the more poetic type he’d find some meaning in that. He found some meaning anyway, a warm glow of contentment that reminded him of the sun-warmed sands of Calimshan, of Dwahvel’s smile and the bite of whatever drink she was serving. A bit of home, if people like him had such a thing.

“And here I thought you’d want to go straight to the stabbing,” Artemis said, curling an arm around Jarlaxle’s waist.

Jarlaxle blinked but kept walking, taking a moment to register what Artemis had just said. Without missing a step, he simply steered them around, heading back towards their apartment.

“Stabbing, you say?”

Artemis’ lips curled in a smirk. “I heard it was a hobby of yours.”

 

Back at the apartment, Jarlaxle had poured more wine for them to ignore and forget on the endtable. Parts of this were familiar, almost easy now, the taste of Jarlaxle’s wine-touched lips, the heat of his body, the expert press of his fingertips and the pleased groans in his throat. Familiar in their own way, moored to their own memories.

The hat had made it about as far as the floor, the rest of their clothes sketching a trail from the door to the bed, and for the first time, everywhere Jarlaxle’s fingers touched Artemis, they found only skin. He knew the man’s scars by sight already—he’d given him a few himself—but now he knew them by touch, mapping out their shapes with his fingertips.

“Artemis…” Jarlaxle knew Artemis liked the way he said his name in these moments, more breath than sound.

The roll of his hips was familiar too, Jarlaxle’s heat against Artemis’, the friction setting up a delicious crescendo of pleasure. But then the angle was different, Jarlaxle tipping his hips up in an invitation that had Artemis pushing himself up onto his elbows and looking at him, an inscrutable look on his face.

They were going to need to work on that, Jarlaxle reflected. If Artemis was going to try to communicate with him with only a look, he was going to need to stop masking what that look meant.

“You did promise stabbing,” Jarlaxle said, shrugging one shoulder, his hands continuing their slow exploration of Artemis’ skin.

Artemis huffed. One finger traced the outline of Jarlaxle’s eyepatch. “Yes, far be it from me to give up the opportunity to stab you, metaphorically or otherwise.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Artemis pushed the eyepatch up off his face, and Jarlaxle’s smile took on a more guarded edge, as though he couldn’t show every part of his face all at once. Strip off one mask to find another underneath, but Artemis supposed they were both like that, throwing up defenses as quickly as they took them down. He set the eyepatch on the endtable to be forgotten too.

“Oil?” Artemis asked, if only to distract Jarlaxle from whatever thoughts had put that curious look on his face.

“Hat.” Jarlaxle tipped his head in the direction he’d dropped it, and Artemis braced himself with one hand on the bed, reaching over to scoop it up. “Some incentive for you not to toss the thing across the room.”

“Oh?” Artemis drawled, tipping the inside of the hat in Jarlaxle’s direction. Jarlaxle reached in and pulled out a slim vial, then let out a shout of dismay when Artemis tossed the hat across the room anyway.

Jarlaxle looked up at him with a look of mock outrage, but Artemis just laughed. “You brute!”

“You shouldn’t give me ideas.”

The look on Jarlaxle’s face turned sly. “Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ve given you a few good ones.” As he spoke, he reached between them and wrapped his hand around Artemis, grinning at the way that made his breath hitch.

“Are you going to turn everything into an innuendo?” Artemis groused, though there was a tight quality to his voice as he rocked forward into Jarlaxle’s hand.

“How long have you been traveling with me, Artemis? I think you know the answer.”

Artemis shut him up with another kiss, feeling Jarlaxle’s grin against his lips. He felt Jarlaxle’s breathing deepen as his lips dropped to his neck, felt the bite of Jarlaxle’s nails in his shoulder, felt Jarlaxle’s hand leave him and press the vial into his.

Stabbing. Right. This part was unfamiliar, though he understood the mechanics well enough. What he didn’t understand was why someone would want to be on the receiving end of this. Even with the oil and the slow press, Jarlaxle was so tight around his finger that Artemis wondered how this was going to work, and it hit him sharply, like a knife in the gut, that he’d been so worried about being hurt this way, that he hadn’t considered he might be the one doing the hurting.

The thought made him a little ill, but Jarlaxle was pliant underneath him with no flinch of pain or discomfort, his breathing even, eyes closed.

When Jarlaxle breathed out, “More,” Artemis was doubtful but compliant, working in another finger, and Jarlaxle arched under him, eyelids fluttering open to see the guarded look on Artemis’ face. He wore that look when he was uncertain, he knew, and remembered that this was beyond the scope of his experience.

“Trust me,” he said with a crooked smile Artemis usually would not trust in the least. “I’ve been doing this for centuries.”

“You make it sound like you have been doing nothing but having anal sex for hundreds of years.”

That startled a laugh out of Jarlaxle. “No, but now I know how I should like to spend my retirement. Here…” Jarlaxle reached down, taking Artemis’ hand and tilting his hips, adjusting the angle his fingers were pressing in. “Curl your fingers and…” His breath hitched as Artemis obeyed, a small moan escaping him at the bolt of pleasure that sent through him.

Now Artemis was watching him curiously instead, fingers working against that spot, and Jarlaxle’s toes curled, legs wrapping tighter around Artemis as he rocked up into his fingers. He didn’t choke back the moans that bubbled up his throat.

Artemis was a fast learner, varying speed and pressure, playing with him to see what would wring out the best sounds while Jarlaxle clung to him, murmuring curses between shaky breaths.

“More,” Jarlaxle demanded again, a desperate edge to the plea, and this time Artemis obeyed without question. Jarlaxle could feel the stretch now—it had been a while—but the burn only added a sharper edge to the pleasure. When Artemis’ teeth scraped the shell of his ear, that edge sharpened to a razor point, and he writhed, moans rising in pitch as he clutched at Artemis, desperate to pull him closer. “Xas! Artemis! Mzild! Mzild!”

 _More_ , Artemis translated, and he supposed he was doing something right if Jarlaxle was lapsing back into Drow. He pinched the tip of Jarlaxle’s ear between his teeth, felt him shudder as he pulled his fingers free. He only hesitated a moment, but a moment was all it took to make Jarlaxle impatient. With a growl, Jarlaxle rolled them both so that he was sitting astride Artemis’ hips, Artemis laid out on his back with his pulse in his ears.

Artemis wondered what expression showed on his face that Jarlaxle stilled when he looked at him. The heat in his eyes softened, lips quirking up in that unreassuring smile.

“Trust me, _mal’ai_.”

Artemis wasn’t sure he should, but he wanted to. Perhaps, he already did. Dangerous, he knew, but then Jarlaxle always was dangerous.

All thought stuttered to a stop when Jarlaxle reached behind him, guiding him in. The tight heat was almost too much, and in the back of his mind, he was aware of Jarlaxle watching his face as closely he’d been watching Jarlaxle’s earlier.

Jarlaxle rolled his hips and watched Artemis’ face slacken with pleasure, the tight lines around his eyes smoothing over. Slowly, with each undulation of his hips, he was coaxing that tight control out of Artemis’ hands. Artemis followed the rhythm Jarlaxle set, planting his feet on the bed to thrust in at that angle his fingers had found earlier, and as Jarlaxle arched and moaned, he wondered if maybe he was unraveling too.

“Trust… trust you to know r-right where to stab,” Jarlaxle quipped breathlessly.

Artemis gave him a pained look, still rocking up into him. “Really? Now?”

Jarlaxle let out a laugh that was more air than sound. “It’s a compliment!” His words were punctuated with a gasp when Artemis thrust in particularly deep.

“Are you all right?” Artemis asked, hands tightening on his hips in concern, and Jarlaxle supposed there was something endearing in that, in how careful he was being. They would have to work on that, too.

“Gods, yes! Do that again!”

Surprise flit over Artemis’ face, but then he was thrusting up with intent, forcing Jarlaxle to grip the headboard to keep his balance as he rocked back into him. Jarlaxle fell back into murmuring in Drow, then lost all faculty for speech altogether, and somewhere through the throb of his pulse and the haze of pleasure, Artemis reflected that that was new.

Or maybe he still had the capacity for one word. “Ah! Artemis!”

Artemis knew he was close from the cadence of his breathing, from the fine tremble that ran through his body, knuckles gray where they gripped the headboard. Artemis sat up, pulling Jarlaxle into a messy, breathless kiss, and Jarlaxle clung to him, whimpering against his lips. When Artemis wrapped a hand around him, he was gone, the world blotted out in a haze of white static except for where Artemis’ skin pressed against his.

Jarlaxle’s muscles rippled and clenched around him, dragging Artemis over the edge shortly after, choked moans stoppered against Jarlaxle’s neck, joining Jarlaxle in that haze of white static.

He came back to himself, panting, his forehead on Jarlaxle’s shoulder, Jarlaxle’s hand in his hair. Gently, Jarlaxle pulled Artemis’ head back to look at him. The man was hard to read at the best of times, but right now he looked torn open, expression raw in a way that made Jarlaxle’s chest ache. His heart was a broken bone that hadn’t set properly, and Jarlaxle knew the mending would be painful.

Then Artemis blinked, quirked an eyebrow, and that expression was gone. “What? No comment about stabbing? Or tentacles?”

Jarlaxle considered making a smart comment, but he never liked being predictable and so pulled him into a lazy kiss instead. Even as he kissed back, Artemis made a questioning sound in the back of his throat, caught offguard by the intimacy of it even as he soaked it in.

Jarlaxle pulled back and smiled, finding that uncertain look on Artemis’ face again. Then, because he couldn’t resist… “Thank you for stabbing me with your tentacle.”

Artemis made that wheezing sound that tried to be a laugh. “Gods, you are impossible.”

 

The next day, Jarlaxle had found their next job— _“We’re off to rescue a nobleman’s kidnapped daughter. Isn’t that romantic?”—_ and chattered on about it all the way to the city gate, while Entreri yawned into his hand, tuned him out, and waited for the second cup of coffee to kick in. It was only as they walked by Marsk’s without stopping to pick up their horses that Entreri started paying more attention.

“Do we mean to follow them on foot?” he asked.

“Of course not, _mal’ai_ ,” Jarlaxle said, hooking his arm through Entreri’s, and Artemis tried to look disgruntled by the proximity. “I had told you I would look into another means of conveyance, and, as much as I enjoyed riding you, I’m afraid that won’t help us in our chase.”

Entreri felt the heat rush to his face, shooting a glare at the passers-by who’d looked over at that comment. “Then what? Are we to bother Kimmuriel?”

“Not today, if I can help it.”

Jarlaxle was enjoying Artemis’ frustration a little too much, but he didn’t show his hand until they were out of the city and out of sight of the gates. Then he pulled Artemis to a stop next to him, reaching into his hat and pulling out a pair of figurines—sleek, black horse figurines with flames for manes and tails. Entreri thought of Guenwhyvar, recalling her figurine to be about the same size, potentially even the same material.

“Gromph had use for the Soul Gem, and I had use for these.” Jarlaxle replaced the hat on his head and held up the figurines with a beaming smile.

“Cute,” Artemis drawled, “but even I’m not that small.”

Jarlaxle rolled his eyes and tossed one figurine to the ground, calling its name. There was a swirl of mist, the rotten stink of brimstone, and in the figurine’s place stood a Nightmare, its hooves sending off sparks where it kicked against the dirt. It snorted and seemed to eye the half-melted snow distastefully.

Jarlaxle nodded in approval and leaned into Artemis. “I suspect it is about as enamored of the cold as you are.”

Entreri couldn’t quite keep his lips from twitching towards a smile. To him mounts were tools—to be looked after and treated with care, of course, as any tools should be—and generally he did not care so long as the horse followed instruction and served its purpose. But this? He rather liked this.

“As impressive as that is, I am uncertain if the burn marks in unmentionable places will be worth it.”

“It will not burn its rider. And who says the other one’s for you?”

Artemis met Jarlaxle’s teasing look with an arched eyebrow. “So you bought two nightmares for yourself, then?”

“One for each foot.”

“Jarlaxle, you’re enough of a nightmare on your own.”

Jarlaxle laughed. “Well, you _are_ welcome to ride me too, but that just brings us back to square one.”

Entreri sputtered, face heating again. “I assure you, that was not what I meant.”

Jarlaxle shrugged insouciantly and pressed the other figurine into Artemis’ hand. “Your loss.”

Entreri pushed away those images and tossed his figurine to the ground, calling the creature to him the same way that Jarlaxle had. Even with his ring of protection, he was still hesitant to touch the flames, until he watched Jarlaxle swing himself up onto his mount with ease and no trace of fear. He thought of the previous night, of the words _trust me_ on Jarlaxle’s lips, and had little doubt that this drow was going to get him killed one day.

He swung up onto the Nightmare anyway, meeting Jarlaxle’s smile with a look too fond to be a scowl.

“So where to now, Nightmare of Nightmares?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~yeah I know that's not how they get the Nightmares, but I just had to make the riding joke~~
> 
>  
> 
> The End! Tada! Thank you, everyone, who's been following this. The comments have been helpful (and quite a bit of fun).
> 
> I should like to write more with these two, I think, though I need to finish another project first. Perhaps a continuation of this AU, if there's interest? ~~What sort of stuff would you guys like to see? I can't guarantee I'd write it, but even discussing it might help give me ideas which I need, halp~~. EDIT: nvm, my dudes, I have Ideas. Just... as long as people are interested.


End file.
